Chapter Thirteen #2
Ahead of me, impossibly bright against the dark sky, the white dragon wheeled in a slow circle, waiting.
I threw myself after him.
BEN
The air was cold as I climbed into the wide open sky. God, I’d missed this. I hadn’t realised quite how badly until I’d had it again. A gusty wind was blowing, and my wings knew exactly how to compensate with each beat. I wondered how humans managed, never experiencing this simple, profound joy.
For a few glorious moments, I simply flew. Then I banked in a slow circle, waiting for Dominic to join me. A heartbeat later, he burst through the low cloud layer in a flash of silver-grey scales and sheer unrestrained power.
Oh God. Nothing had prepared me for this version of Dominic.
Not the human one, with all that restless energy trapped under his skin, nor the glimpses I’d had of his dragon pressing too close to the surface.
Up here, there was no trace of restraint left in him at all.
He was exultant, climbing hard into the night before folding his wings sharply and dropping with terrifying speed towards the dark hills below.
I banked sharply, breathless. He levelled out barely above the ridge line, skimming the land with an absolute confidence that made my stomach tighten, before twisting upwards again in a fluid movement filled with joy. And something wilder.
Freedom. The word came unsought to my mind, and I knew it was true.
Because up here, he wasn’t being difficult or provocative.
He wasn’t the dragon constantly braced against an invisible enemy in the house below—a bracing I hadn’t consciously noticed until it was gone.
Here, in the night sky, he was simply, joyously, savagely free.
And beautiful. The thought landed with enough force that for a second I almost forgot to beat my wings.
Dominic banked back towards me then, moonlight catching silver along the edges of his wings, and his amused voice sounded in my head.
Careful, historian. You’re staring.
I nearly dropped out of the bloody sky. It wasn’t as if I’d forgotten we could speak into one another’s minds as dragons—I just hadn’t expected it from him. And definitely not that tone, teasing, full of laughter, and relaxed. Without the edge that always seemed to be there in human form.
He laughed into my mind and wheeled away. I accepted his invitation and chased him around the dark night sky, through heavy, wet clouds that clung to our scales, past silver-tipped stones on hillsides. I was dizzy with joy.
Eventually, he banked towards the ground, and I saw the rocky outcrop we’d started from. I felt lighter somehow, full of bubbles as I backwinged in beside him. Closer than I should—a leftover of the feelings that had been there as we flew.
It’d been so long since I’d flown with anyone else, and it had never been like that, save perhaps as a dragonet with my sister when we’d played together.
With Will, it had been… nice. Like everything had been.
With Dominic, it had been many things, but so far beyond nice, it didn’t even make the list.
I shifted first, and he followed as I turned my phone on to help us see while getting dressed.
One moment, silver-grey scales caught the light.
The next, Dominic stood barefoot on the wet grass, damp hair falling across his forehead, skin gleaming faintly where mist and cloud-water still clung to him.
Oh dear God. Seeing him shirtless had been bad enough.
This was on an entirely different level.
He stood loose-limbed and entirely unselfconscious in the cold night air, broad shoulders rising and falling slightly faster than usual from the exertion of flight.
My flashlight traced the powerful lines of muscle through his chest and stomach, the strength in his thighs, the sharp cut of his hips.
Finally, his cock, soft and heavy, and absolutely mouthwatering.
He was beautiful. And then my cock decided it agreed, and reacted with spectacular and deeply unfortunate honesty.
I half-turned away as I reached for my clothes, desperately yanking my underwear on with fingers that were suddenly clumsy, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t have noticed.
Of course he would have. I already knew he noticed everything, whether he admitted to it or not.
But even while part of me was willing my dick back down, another traitorous part of me didn’t entirely care.
It was as if I’d thrown caution to the winds up there with Dominic, and somehow forgotten to pick it up again.
For that instant, I felt wild—as if I could do anything, be anything.
As I pulled my trousers on, I couldn’t resist any longer, and I glanced back at him. His eyes flicked downward briefly to my not-so-small problem, but then came back to my face, without a hint of the smirk I was expecting. His gaze was heated on mine, and that was absolutely not helping.
Then he turned away and started dressing, which I was not going to watch.
Something about the way he moved… He was magnetic.
I’d seen it in the house, the way everyone always knew where he was in a room.
It wasn’t like they were with Rhodri, scanning for threats.
This was as if they couldn’t look away from him.
And I was beginning to understand their problem a little too well.
“Come on,” he said. “Before we both freeze to death up here.”
He was obviously going to ignore what had just happened, to my deep relief.
As we picked our way down the damp hillside, I could see him changing with each step.
The closer we got to the house, the more he tightened up, the less I was able to read his face.
And I knew how he felt, I thought, as the house came into sight.
It was like a predator of some kind—no, more a parasite, sucking the life and lightness out of anyone who ventured in.
And maybe we’d been flying longer than I’d realised and I was getting loopy on lack of sleep, because that was just ridiculous. Though as Dominic peeled away from me at the door without another word, I thought perhaps he might not think so.