Chapter 12
Carla
I can’t stop shaking.
It comes in waves. I’ll think I’m okay, and then I’ll remember the weight of that male’s hand fisting in my skirt, the sound the fabric made when it tore, and my whole body starts up again.
I press my palms flat against my thighs and breathe through it.
In through my nose. Out through my mouth. Then do it again.
He’s dead. Magma killed him. I watched it happen.
It doesn’t seem to matter. My body hasn’t gotten the message yet.
One thing is for sure: dragon shifters are nothing like humans.
Not even close. I’ve worked alongside them for years.
I’ve booked their appointments and ordered their supplies and laughed at their jokes in the break room, and I thought I understood what they were.
I didn’t understand anything. Humans don’t snap necks with their bare hands.
Humans don’t talk about putting whelps in a woman’s belly like it’s normal.
Humans don’t stand around naked in a jungle like it’s normal.
“We should probably get going,” I tell him.
Magma nods. “We will soon. We have to…” He huffs out a breath, and for the first time since I met him, he looks uncomfortable.
“You smell like a human female. Feral dragons will be able to smell you if they get anywhere near here. Your scent is going to lead them straight to us. They’re not like regular shifters.
They are more dragon than human.” He pauses. “It’s strong, and it’s very feminine.”
The male’s face flashes through my mind.
The way he inhaled with his nostrils flaring wide.
The way he groaned afterward, like I was a meal he hadn’t ordered but planned to eat anyway.
“You scent so good, female.” He said it more than once.
I thought it was just him. Just one disgusting individual being gross.
Apparently not. Apparently, I’m walking around this jungle like a lit flare.
“We don’t want that.” My voice comes out thin, but it comes out. “What do I need to do to get rid of it?”
I keep my eyes on his face. It takes effort, because his cock is still erect, still jutting toward me, and he isn’t making any move to cover it.
He doesn’t even seem aware of it. He’s aroused by the fight.
From killing someone. That’s what he told me, and I’m choosing to believe him because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
It’s strange to me. It’s beyond strange.
A man takes a life, and his body responds like he’s on a third date that’s going well.
But there it is. It’s a dragon thing, clearly.
File it under things I never needed to know.
The problem is, looking at his face isn’t much safer than looking anywhere else, because Magma naked is…
a lot. He’s enormous. His arms are like tree trunks.
I don’t think I could get the fingers of both hands around one of his biceps if I tried.
His shoulders are so broad they block out a chunk of the jungle behind him, and his abs…
Wow. Just…wow.
They’re stacked in ridges all the way down, the dark ink of his tattoos winding over them like the artist couldn’t stop once he started.
Okay. Now I’m being weird. I’m standing here checking him out like he’s a centerfold, and it isn’t right.
It is so far from right. A man tried to force himself on me not so long ago.
I should not be eyeballing anyone’s abdominal muscles.
There is something deeply wrong with me, or maybe this is what shock looks like. I’m going to go with shock.
Magma clears his throat. His brows pull together while he thinks it over.
“Rub yourself in mud and dirt,” he says. “Use those leaves and the moss. Get the scent of the jungle all over you. It’s a pity we can’t start a fire, because you could have used the ash. We need to mask your scent.”
“Okay.” I nod. “I can do that.”
There’s a low spot a few yards away where the ground stays wet, thick with moss and ferns still beaded from the last rain.
I walk over and crouch down, and the mud is cold when I sink my fingers into it.
It squelches up between them, dark and smelling of rot and rain and green things.
I scoop up a handful and hesitate for half a second, because some prim little voice in the back of my head is still saying “that’s dirty, Carla,” and then I think of that male’s nostrils flaring, and I slap it onto my arm and start rubbing.
I do the other arm. My shoulders. My collarbone.
I drag a wet fern frond across my skin and crush moss between my palms and smear the green-black paste of it over my stomach, down my shins, over the tops of my feet.
Then I get to work on my breasts and cake them with mud.
“Your hair too,” he says from behind me. “It scents of orange blossoms.”
Of course it does. I bought that shampoo specifically because of how it smells. Fourteen dollars a bottle, and now it might get me killed.
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’m going to find what’s left of your clothes,” he tells me.
“Don’t bother.” I don’t turn around. “He ripped them to shreds.”
“Not for you to wear.” His voice is matter-of-fact. “I want to bury them. We need to leave no trace of you on this island. If any of the feral males catch wind of a human female out here, we’ll have a big problem because they’ll start hunting. We don’t want that.”
“I see.” I nod, and the panic swells up again, cold and fast, because of course. Of course my torn blouse lying in the mud is like a signpost. Of course every single thing about me is a signpost. I’m a trail of breadcrumbs shaped like a person.
“We’ll get through this.” His eyes are on me. “It’s going to be fine.”
I nod. “I hope so.” I want so badly to believe him. I want to wrap myself up in those five words and live there.
“We will. Keep putting that mud on you.” He turns and walks off into the trees, and I watch him go, because apparently, I have no self-control left whatsoever.
His back is a wall of shifting muscle, and his ass is…
Meaty is the only word for it. Sculpted and powerful and completely bare, flexing with every stride.
I make myself look away. I stare hard at a fern instead.
Then I get back to work. I dig up a fresh handful of mud and work it into my hair, roots to ends, raking my fingers through until the strands clump and stick.
Goodbye, orange blossoms. I pile more onto my chest, over the lace, into the dip between my breasts, up my throat.
I rub crushed leaves over the back of my neck.
By the time I’m wringing the last of it through my ponytail, I’m more swamp creature than woman, and that’s exactly the point.
I’m just finishing up when he comes back through the trees.
“Did you find them?”
He nods. “I buried them.”
“Good.” I let out a breath.
“Your face too, and…” He clears his throat and looks off to the side. “Between your legs. Sorry.” He holds up both hands. “I swear I’m not trying to be rude. It’s just…you have a scent down there too. I can smell you from here.”
I stop breathing.
He can smell me. From there. He can smell my…vagina. From fifteen feet away, through mud and moss and jungle rot, this man can smell my girl parts.
Holy shit.
There is no recovering from this. There is no version of my life where I un-hear this sentence. My face is on fire.
I nod, because what else is there to do? He turns away to give me privacy, and that’s when I notice that his dick is bigger than it was before. Bigger and harder, the head flushed dark, standing up against his stomach now instead of pointing at me.
It’s not me. He said it himself. He’s not attracted to me; it’s the fight, it’s his beast, it’s the adrenaline still burning through his system. Dragon biology. That’s all this is.
I scoop up more mud and smear it across my cheeks, my forehead, my chin.
Then, with all the dignity I have left, which is none, I smear mud over my inner thighs and between my legs.
The cold of it makes me hiss. I must look like something that crawled out of a horror movie.
Honestly, at this point, I’d welcome it.
Nothing in this jungle should want anything to do with me.
“There. How’s that?” I ask when I’m done.
He turns back and sniffs at the air, head tilting, nostrils working. “Much better.”
“But not a hundred percent?”
“It’ll do. We’d better get going.” His tone shifts, going clipped and businesslike, and somehow that’s more reassuring than anything else he’s said. “Stay close to me. We need to be very quiet. If I have to fight, move away so you don’t get injured.”
“Okay, got it.”
“If I’m losing…run and hide,” he says.
The bottom drops out of my stomach. If he’s losing.
If the seven-foot wall of muscle who snapped a man’s neck like a glow stick is losing, then I’m supposed to do what, exactly?
Crouch behind a bush and hope the things that took him down don’t have noses?
My breathing goes quick and shallow, and I can feel my eyes getting too wide. He must see it, because he keeps going.
“I doubt it’ll come to that, unless I’m outnumbered. Even then… I’m well-trained and in my prime. There will need to be a lot of them.”
He’s trying to make me feel better. I’m almost sure of it.
“Good to know,” I say.
“Let’s go.”
I nod, and we head out.
I pray that we don’t run into any of them, but I know that we more than likely will. The odds are against us.