Chapter 23
Magma
I’m awake before the dark even starts to thin.
I lie still for a moment, listening to the jungle below the overhang, letting my senses range out into the trees, and the undergrowth.
Nothing moving that shouldn’t be there. There’s nothing close.
Then for just a moment, I savor the feeling of this… of her.
There is a part of me that is happy we have longer together, even though being in the jungle is risky.
I pull in a nose full of her, getting the musky scent of sex. My cock stirs, but I ignore it, easing my arm out from underneath her and getting to my feet.
She doesn’t move.
She’s face down on the fronds, her hair spread wide, one arm thrown out toward the empty space where I was. She looks young like this. Soft and beautiful. I stand there for a beat longer, and then I get my head straight, leaving the overhang.
Carla isn’t for me.
She never was.
I quickly climb down to the jungle floor. The air is thicker than yesterday, and there’s something in the smell of it that tells me rain is coming.
I move through the trees to the river, keeping close to the root systems and the thicker canopy where the undergrowth is densest. I do a sweep of the bank before I go back for Carla.
She’s awake when I get there, sitting up on the fronds with her hair pushed out of her face, still looking half-asleep but dressed in her meager clothing.
“Morning,” she says.
“We need to get going, but I thought you might like to wash up first.”
She’s on her feet before I finish the sentence. “I would love that.”
We make it to the bank without incident. I do a second sweep while Carla waits at the tree line.
“It’s clear.”
She walks past me and starts pulling at the knot of her skirt, and I face upriver and let her handle it. A moment later, I hear the sound of her stepping in.
I step into the shallows on my side. The water is chilly but very manageable. The humidity is already high. It won’t be long before it’s sweltering, even in the shade of the trees.
We wash. I keep my back to her and my eyes on the upriver stretch, my hands moving over my skin on autopilot while my ears do the real work.
I manage not to look at her, but only just. There is no time for fucking. It doesn’t matter how much I want her.
She doesn’t take long. A few minutes and the sounds of her moving through the water get closer as she comes back to the shallow edge.
It’s only when she’s dressing that I risk a glance.
She’s so damned sexy. She reaches down and pulls up her panties and then slowly pulls on her bra, cupping her tits and pulling them up into the cups. My balls start to pull tight, so I look away.
“Done,” she says as she knots the fabric.
I wade out and sigh.
“The castle is further out than I thought.” I watch her face. “I miscalculated. We’ve covered good ground, but we’re looking at one more night out here at a minimum.”
Her expression doesn’t crumble, but I see the effort it takes. She drops her arms and straightens. “Another night?”
“Yes.”
She breathes out once through her nose. “I had hoped to reach it today.”
“I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. I’m hoping we might make it there before dark tomorrow.”
“This is terrible.” She looks at the water for a second, then back at me. “But okay. I take it we need to pick up the pace?”
That’s the thing about her. She doesn’t spiral. She adjusts.
“I’m hoping to fly us across at some point. We’re still too far out for that to be anything other than a risk right now, but it might be possible later today or tomorrow, if conditions hold. Until then, we need to keep going on foot.”
“Alright.”
“I also need us to stay in the denser parts of the jungle. It adds time, but the thicker cover makes it harder for anything in the air to track us through the canopy.”
She nods. “And doing that slows us down?”
“I’m afraid so, but it’s a necessary evil.”
She chews on that for a moment.
“Carla.” I wait until I have her full attention. “I need you to let me carry you again. We need to pick up the pace, or we won’t make it tomorrow either. It’s as simple as that. You can’t help that your feet are sore.”
“I feel terrible doing that to you. That’s a lot of—”
“Don’t.”
She looks at me for a beat, looking disappointed, and then it’s gone. She pulls her shoulders back and nods once.
“Okay,” she says. “Fine. Thank you. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”
“Don’t apologize, you’re doing great.” Without thinking, I brush a soft kiss on her lips.
Fuck!
I didn’t mean to do that.
“I need to get us some food before we head out,” I quickly say.
“Get muddied up as quickly as you can, and then I want you to sit right here where the trees are dense. Stay very quiet inside these bushes until I get back. There is a tree with ripe fruit nearby. I won’t be more than five or six minutes. ”
“Okay…perfect.”
“Then we can eat and head out. We’ll leave the wrappings off your feet, since I’m carrying you.”
She nods.
I jog away, and a few minutes later, I pick a clutch of ripe camu camu. It’s not much, but it will have to do. We can forage along the way. It’s another good reason for sticking with the denser part of the jungle. There’s more chance of finding food.
I jog back, but Carla isn’t where I told her to wait.
I frown and put the food down. My heart rate increases, but I try not to panic.
I look at the ground, finding prints that don’t belong to Carla or me. There are several pairs, and they are big.
Fuck!
Something cold settles through my chest, and my dragon is there instantly, slamming up into my ribs.
Hunt!
Mine!
For once, we completely agree.
I start running as fast as I can. I pray I don’t lose their trail. Once again, I find myself praying even harder that I am not too late. A group of males might kill her while fighting over her.
Carla
The world is upside down and moving fast.
The arm clamped around my middle is as hard as a steel beam. My muddy hair hangs in my face. I can’t scream. I tried, the moment they burst out of the bushes, but a hand was clamped tightly over my mouth.
I know there are a few of them, but I can’t tell exactly how many.
There is the one carrying me and at least two up ahead.
I’m sure there are more behind us, but I’m doubting myself because of how silent they are.
The only sounds are my ragged breathing through my nose and my heart beating loudly in my ears.
They move like nothing I’ve ever seen, flowing over roots and fallen trunks without breaking stride.
Ink covers their shoulders and arms and backs, dark lines threaded through with crimson, and where the ink ends, scales begin.
They ripple along forearms and collarbones like armor pushing up through skin.
I’ve been taken by a group of feral males.
Holy shit!
Do not panic!
The one carrying me leaps over something – a stream or a gully, I can’t tell. My stomach drops, and my ribs slam against his forearm, and the breath goes out of me. I claw at his arm. It’s like clawing at rock. He doesn’t even look down. His hand stays over my mouth.
Magma will come. He has to come.
We run and run, and the jungle changes around us, growing thicker and darker.
Then, without warning, we stop.
The one carrying me drops me. I hit the ground on my hip and my palms, and the pain flares for a good few moments. I suck in a hard breath, gritting my teeth. We’re in a gap between the trees. Five huge males stand in a rough circle around me.
And they’re all staring at me.
I make myself small. I pull my knees in and press my arms across my chest, hyperaware of how little I’m wearing. Mud streaks my skin. I managed to cover myself with it all over before they got me.
“She’s mine,” the biggest one says.
“No! Mine!” another one answers in a deep voice.
One of them is deep into his shift, but not quite a dragon. He has scales all over him with barely any skin showing. He says something in a thick, guttural voice that I can’t even understand. The others are not quite human, but close enough.
“Why do you get to keep her?” one with a huge bushy beard shouts.
When they talk, their lips pull back over teeth too long to be human. Their nails are claws. They all have scales scattered over various parts of their bodies.
“We’ll share her,” the smallest of the bunch announces, making me feel sick to my stomach. He leers at me, grinning. “I don’t even have to go first.”
Pig!
“I don’t share!” Bushy beard shouts.
The two of them collide. It happens so fast I flinch back into the dirt. One second, they’re circling, and the next, they’re a knot of muscle and fury, slamming into the trunk of a fallen tree, on the far side of the clearing. They hit it so hard that bark explodes off it.
“Mine!” the blond one says, banging his fist against his chest, over and over.
I look away from them, and my gaze snags on the gap in the trees to my left. If I could get ten feet into that, maybe I could disappear. Maybe they won’t notice me leaving.
The two grappling males crash to the ground, and every eye follows them. They’re making a big commotion.
This is my chance. I’m up and running, my ruined feet screaming as I try to get away.
Almost immediately, something hits me from the side, and the world spins, and there’s a hand around my ankle. I’m being dragged backward through the leaf litter, kicking, twisting. Then I’m dumped on the ground in the middle of the circle again.
“No running, female. Is dangerous,” the tall, wiry one tells me.
The fighting flares again as two of them start tearing into each other to the right of us. It’s a different pair this time. Bushy Beard wades in and hauls the two grapplers apart.
He roars. The sound rolls through the clearing and up through the ground into my bones, and everything stops. The two fighters break apart, bleeding. They are all quiet for a few moments, looking at each other and at me.
“We will draw sticks. The male who draws the short stick wins the female,” he announces.
“That’s stupid,” the tall one snarls.
“Good plan.” The smaller, leery one nods.