Chapter 10
Carla
The world drops out from under me, and then the ground comes up to meet me, hard and fast. I hit the jungle floor on my side and roll, leaves and dirt and something wet smearing across my cheek.
Everything spins. The canopy whirls overhead, green and gold, the light strobing through the branches in a way that makes my head swim.
My ears are still roaring from the flight.
From the wind and the screeching and the awful crack of dragons colliding somewhere above us.
I push up onto one elbow. My arms don’t want to work. My whole body feels wrong, like it belongs to someone else. There’s dirt in my mouth. I spit and blink hard, trying to get the trees to stop moving.
I roll over.
The dragon is shifting. Scales pull back into bronzed skin, wings fold down into themselves, that huge serpentine body collapsing inward like the air is being let out of it.
Except what’s left isn’t small. What’s left is a huge male.
He has to be close to seven feet tall, with wide shoulders like a linebacker.
His beard is wild and thick. His hair too.
There are red-inked tattoos snaking up his arms, and all over his torso.
His muscles bulge so much that he has veins sticking out.
A Red.
Not just any Red but one of the feral ones.
I’m in trouble here.
He sees me looking, and he grins.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Get up, Carla. Get up.
I force myself onto my feet. My legs don’t want to hold me, and I lock my knees to make them. My skirt is torn at the hem, and one of my shoes is gone.
He looks me over. Slowly. Top to bottom and back up again, dragging his gaze over me in a way that makes my skin crawl. He makes this weird noise in his throat.
Then his cock stirs. It thickens until it’s jutting out from his body, huge and veined like his arms and neck. He just keeps staring at me while it bobs there between his legs.
He inhales through his nose, long and deep, and groans like he’s tasting something delicious.
“You and I are going to get to know one another,” he says. His voice is rusted.
“Leave me alone.” I take a step back. A twig stabs the arch of my foot, and I don’t even flinch. I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything except the cold flood of fear moving through me.
“It doesn’t have to hurt.” He sniffs again, nostrils flaring wide, and takes a step toward me.
“It will hurt.” My voice cracks. “Please go away.”
I know I may as well save my breath, but I have to try.
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m going to mate you now. I’m going to put my whelps inside your belly.”
“No.” I shake my head; my voice is shrill. “Don’t touch me.” I point at him, my finger trembling, and I don’t care. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Get onto your knees, female. Make it easy on yourself,” he says. “I will give you a few seconds to prepare. Hurry!”
“What do you mean prepare?” I can guess, and it makes me feel sick. “No!”
“Yes! Touch yourself. Quickly now. Make yourself wet for me. You are getting my cock, whether you want it or not.”
“Don’t you have ears?” I’m shouting now. “Are you hard of hearing? I don’t want you.” My voice shakes on every word. “Leave me alone.”
He takes another step toward me.
He breathes me in again, eyes half closing. “You smell soft and warm. You will be very small. Get ready!” he growls, fisting his cock, his hand moving up and down.
“Leave me alone!” I repeat. I’m backing away, one step for every one of his.
He shakes his head. “You are mine,” he says, and the word lands like a verdict. “Get on your knees. Do it now!”
“No.” I shake my head.
His cock twitches and a bead of pre-cum swells at the tip and runs down the length of him in a dribble. My stomach turns over so violently that I taste acid at the back of my tongue.
“No!” I hold up a hand like I can ward him off.
I wish!
“Enough talking.” His eyes flick to the canopy, then back to me. “If one of the others finds you before I claim you, they will take you for themselves. I need to mark you with my seed. Lots of seed.” And he starts toward me.
Revulsion fills me.
“No.”
“Yes.”
I turn and run.
I know it’s useless. He’s twice my size, and this is his jungle, and I’m still in my work clothes, but I run anyway, because the alternative is standing still and letting it happen, and I refuse.
I jump over a root and skitter around a tree. He’s right behind me, crashing through the undergrowth like a freight train, not even hurrying, and that’s the worst part.
I force myself to move faster, but it’s no use.
A hand closes on my shoulder and spins me around to face him. I swing at him. My fist connects with his jaw, and it’s like punching a wall. It hurts, but I don’t care.
I kick at his shin, his knee, anything I can reach. He doesn’t even grunt. He catches my wrist in one enormous hand.
“Stop.” He gives me a small shake. “Don’t fight me. I am mating you now.”
“Like hell you are.”
He grabs the collar of my jacket and rips it off me, the seams shrieking, my arms wrenched back as the fabric tears away.
I scream and claw at his face, going for his eyes.
He turns his head, and my nails rake his cheek instead, leaving four red lines that close up in front of me.
He tears my blouse open, buttons popping into the leaves.
He rips at it again, tearing it clean off me. Leaving me in just my bra, panties, and skirt.
“No! Get off me. Get off me!”
His fingers hook into the waistband of my skirt, and the fabric gives way down one side, and then he shoves me, and I go down onto my back so hard the air leaves my lungs in one whoosh. For a second, I can’t make a sound at all. I can’t pull anything in. The canopy spins above me.
I have to work to get air into my lungs so that I can keep fighting.
I have to fight.
Then he’s on top of me.
His weight pins me to the ground and his hands close around mine, trapping them against the dirt above my head.
I buck and twist, and it does nothing. Nothing.
It’s like fighting a statue. Like he’s made of stone and I’m made of paper.
My lungs come back online, and I scream.
I scream so loud it scrapes my throat raw, and the birds explode out of the trees above us.
“Shhhhhh.” He glances around, scanning the jungle, his head cocked to listen. “More will come. You don’t want that. You will be hurt…killed.”
Like he’s not hurting me now.
He turns his head again; this time his body lifts. It’s the only chance I’m going to get.
I drive my knee up into his groin with everything I have. Everything. Every ounce of terror and fury in my body, all of it concentrated into one strike.
He makes a sound I’ll hear in my nightmares, high and strangled, and rolls off me, both hands clamped over his crotch, his knees drawing up.
I’m on my feet and running. I dodge trees, vaulting a fallen log, ferns slashing wet against my thighs. There’s a slope ahead, and I take it at a sprint, half sliding down the muddy bank, catching myself on a vine, and I keep going, keep going, don’t look back, don’t you dare look back—
There’s crashing and bellowing from behind me, so I force myself to go faster. My breath is sawing in and out, my legs are screaming, and it’s not enough; it was never going to be enough—
Something hits me from behind, and I go down onto my knees, palms skidding through wet leaves. A fist closes in what’s left of my skirt and tears it away completely, and I’m screaming again, trying to twist back, trying to—
And then he’s gone.
The weight, the hands, the heat of him, gone, ripped away, and the jungle fills with the most terrible snarling I’ve ever heard. It isn’t human.
I scramble around in the mud, expecting to see a mountain lion, but it isn’t. It’s two of them locked in battle.
I recognize…
No… Shit!
Magma has the male by the throat. The two of them crash through a stand of saplings, snapping them off at the base like matchsticks. I have never been happier to see anyone in my entire life. The relief is so enormous it pulls a sob from me. I clamber to my feet.
The other male swings a fist the size of a cinder block.
Magma slips it, steps inside, and drives his elbow into the male’s face with a crunch.
Blood sprays. The male roars and charges, and Magma turns with him, uses his momentum, and slams him face-first into a tree trunk hard enough to shake loose a rain of leaves.
He should be done. The Red comes up swinging, blood sheeting from his nose into his beard, and lands one heavy blow against Magma’s ribs that would have killed me outright.
Magma doesn’t even slow down. He’s faster.
Every move the male makes, Magma is already somewhere else, already answering, fists hammering at the Red’s jaw, throat and temple.
The male staggers and Magma sweeps his legs and rides him down into the mud, and there’s a moment where their eyes meet, and I see the male understand.
Then Magma takes the male’s head in both hands and wrenches it sideways.
The crack echoes off the trees.
The jungle goes very quiet. Even the insects have stopped.
The male’s body sags into the mud, and Magma rises off it, chest heaving, and turns to me.
He’s naked, and he is carved out of muscle, the dark ink of his tattoos winding over his shoulders and down his arms. His chest is heaving from the exertion. His hair hangs wild around his face. His eyes are wild too. Lit up with something molten that hasn’t cooled yet, and they’re locked on me.
“Are you okay?” His voice comes out rough. Half in a growl.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
“Carla.” He says my name carefully, like it might break. “Are you okay?”
That’s when I realize my mouth is hanging open. That my eyes are stretched wide. I feel cold all over, even though I’m in the middle of a tropical jungle.
I shake my head.
And then the tears come. Hot and fast, flooding down my face, and I can’t stop them. I don’t even try. A sound comes out of me that I don’t recognize, cracked and awful, and I’m shaking so hard I can hear my own breath stuttering.
He closes the distance between us in three strides and wraps me up in his arms.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers into my hair. “You’re safe now. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
He’s huge, and he’s warm, and he folds himself around me like a wall between me and the rest of the world.
I bury my face in his chest. His heart is going hard under my ear, and I hold on to him with both hands, fingers digging in like he might be taken from me too.
And I pray. I pray harder than I’ve ever prayed for anything. I pray that he’s right, but I don’t see how he can be.