by Amelia Jade
Clothes picked out, she strode from her room, pulling her hair up into a ponytail so that it stayed off her neck while it did its last bit of drying.
Zander ran an appraising eye up and down her body, and she felt a thrill run through her at the way he inhaled, his pupils dilating as he checked her out. It wasn’t often that she felt attractive. But just then, knowing that she was the object of attraction for a man as gorgeous as Zander was…empowering, to say the least. She subtly tugged her top a little lower, giving him a bit better view down her shirt.
Could you be any more obvious? You aren’t an all-you-can-eat buffet woman! Make him work for it at least.
Riss ignored her inner voice’s commentary, enjoying the way Zander’s eyes flared open even a little more. He did a credible effort of not looking, but he was, in the end, still male.
He looked.
Twice.
“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing to the door, realizing he’d been busted and trying to change the subject.
“Lead on,” she replied, and they exited the house.
It was a warmer day than the past few had been, and the sun had broken through the clouds. The combination of both of those served to make her a little warmer than she might have preferred.
The sunlight reflected off Zander’s tan skin and drew out the burnished gold in his hair. She immediately snuggled up to his side, all reservations gone as his bulk pressed up against her. They walked along the red- and orange-cobblestoned roads on a meandering path that she knew was taking them toward the outskirts of town, but was definitely not the fastest or most direct route.
Zander was stalling.
“Why are you delaying things?” she asked as the last of the buildings stopped, giving way to fields beyond, where crops were grown and tended by some of the more tenacious shifters in Cadia.
“I’m not delaying,” he replied happily.
“We could have gotten here much faster though,” she stated, puzzled.
“Yes. But then I wouldn’t have been able to spend as much time with you like this,” he said, pulling her tight to his side.
“Are we not going to do that anymore?” Riss was confused.
Zander’s joyful smile stretched wider. “Not…quite.”
“Well, I officially have no idea what you mean.”
“Here,” Zander said, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her up onto the concrete wall that surrounded the last property on their right. He waited till she was seated on it, and then he did something she did not expect.
Zander, forgoing the opening in the wall fifty feet back down the road, simply took a step back, tossed her a wink, and then with one stride jumped clear over the wall, landing easily on the other side.
“Well that’s a neat party trick,” she snorted, trying to act far less impressed than she was. “I wish I knew how to do it.”
“Dragon stuff,” he said with fake crypticness.
“You just wanted me up here so that you could show off?” she asked, spinning around to the other side of the flat-topped wall, to see Zander standing in the middle of a circle of stones.
She made to get down and join him, but an upraised hand stopped her.
“What?”
“It, uh, it would be better if you stayed there,” he said.
It took Riss a moment longer to realize why he was standing in the stones. She knew what the circles were for, but hadn’t attached that meaning to Zander just yet.
“Oh, right. Okay.”
It wasn’t the first time Riss had seen a dragon change. They weren’t the most populous of the shifter races, but there were more than enough of them in Cadia for her to have seen numerous changes.
That being said, she’d never seen a metallic dragon change before. They were, to her limited knowledge, the rarest of dragons.
So she was fascinated as he brought his arms to his face, pressing his forearms together and closing his eyes. That was different than most dragons, who either stood with their arms at their sides or took a knee.
The air around him began to shimmer, and she saw the little bits of detritus that had fallen onto the circle become swept up into the whirling, howling windstorm that engulfed Zander in a nearly perfect sphere. The wind moved faster and faster, until it twisted the very air to the point it went from transparent, to translucent, and then finally opaque, obscuring and blurring beyond the point of recognition, anything on the inside.
Then the shrieking tornado began to tug at her as it grew and swelled in size, occupying near half of the circle, and continuing to increase its radius. Just when she thought it was going to threaten to suck her in, it swirled down to the ground and blasted outward in a dissipating wave.
What it left behind, however, was far more impressive than the actual change itself. Riss stared in awe at the magnificent creature that was eyeing her with its golden-yellow orbs, oval pupils jerking back and forth as he looked at her.
Warm air washed over her as the huge brass dragon exhaled from its long snout. Double eyelids blinked, the nictitating membranes moving in opposite directions of each other, one set vertical the other horizontal.
“So this is what you meant by not being able to stand side by side,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied, his voice slightly more baritone now, but still a rumble like tires on gravel.
The dragon head came forward until Riss could reach out and touch it. She did, her hand tentatively making contact with the leathery skin of his snout, which was devoid of scales.
It was warm and tough, just as it looked. Teeth longer than her fingers protruded in several spots, and she saw up close and personal why the dragons were undisputedly the most powerful shifters on the planet.
“So what now?” she asked, regaining some of her confidence, enough to hop down from the wall and approach the massive central body of the dragon. At least twenty-five feet long, she knew he was smaller than some of the blue and white dragons that came and went, or even the larger reds that were most frequently seen. But he was still the biggest creature she had ever seen.
Her fingers knocked against one of his scales, the brass covering feeling like a steel plate under her touch. It was some serious protection from harm, that was for sure.
A scraping on the stone beneath her drew her attention to the nearly foot-long talons that sprouted from his paws.
Not much protection against a set of those, though.
Dragon claws, she knew, were one of the few things that could rip through another dragon’s scales. A dragon’s biggest threat was another dragon.
But he’s not just any dragon, she thought, eyeing the massive wing membranes, colored a much darker goldish tint than his body. Zander was a Guardian, which meant he was far above his fellow untrained dragons in abilities and strength.
“Now,” he said in response to her question. “We go for a ride.”
Riss looked up at him in shock.
***
Zander
“I’m sorry, what?” she said.
“We’re going for a ride,” he repeated, trying not to laugh at the look on her face.
It had started as shock, morphed quickly to excitement, and was now flickering back and forth from that to sheer terror.
“Ahhh,” Riss said, unsure.
“Come on, climb on,” he said, stretching his wing out and putting it on the ground, so that she could easily climb up it onto his back.
“There’s nowhere for me to, you know,” she said, looking at his body and then back to his eyes.
“Sit?” he supplied.
“Yeah. On a horse there’s a saddle, right? So that’s where I would sit. But, um, on you, how would I?”
“You climb up my wing, to start,” he coached, pushing it closer to her.
“It will support me?”
Now he did laugh.
“Without issue. Trust me,” he said. “You are not the first person to climb aboard.”
He immediately regretted saying that.
“That was not the way I meant it,” he said. “And you know it.”
Riss frowned. “I know, I know. But still.”
“Riss, I am over two centuries old. I make no apologies for having lived them. What you need to know, and all that you need to know, is that right now, I’m living it with you.”
She looked up at him grumpily. “You know, that’s a pretty good line. Used it often?”
“Not fair,” he replied. “And no, I haven’t.”
It was true. He’d never used that particular phrase before. Because he’d never considered himself to be living his life with someone before. Oh they weren’t so interwoven like many dragon mates he’d met. But there was something intangible, something that bound him to her, and he believed it did the same back.
It terrified him, but he wasn’t going to deny that it existed.
“Very well. I suppose I’m not exactly brand-new to all of this either,” she admitted.
Zander very carefully did not say anything at all in response to that.
“Okay, now where?” she asked, walking around in circles on his back.
“Now straddle my neck,” he using the tip of his wing to indicate the spot.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Just do it,” he told her with another laugh, and spread his wings wide.
“Ooookay,” she said, very unsure of it.
But the moment she was settled he took off.
Riss screamed and screamed as the ground disappeared below them. Her hands dug under the edges of his scales on either side of his neck, pulling her tight as her face pressed against him.
Then all at once the screams became cries of delight, as he leveled off and she realized she wasn’t plummeting to her death.
“Oh Zander, this is beautiful!” she shouted above the wind as it whipped over them.
He wasn’t going particularly fast, using more energy than was necessary to keep them aloft. It wasn’t his preferred way to fly, but this way the wind was slower and therefore it was easier for Riss to see, and for the two of them to have a conversation while aloft.
“I can see everything from up here,” she went on, pointing out various places. “There’s my street. And that big thing there, that has to be the Cadian Hall, right? And—”
He banked around, swirling upward in a thermal plume of hot air.
Riss’s voice died as the Quicksilver mountain range came into view.
“Oh wow,” she said, so softly that only his enhanced hearing allowed him to hear it. “It’s breathtaking.”
Sunlight reflected off the snowcapped peaks of the giant rock daggers thrusting up from the earth. The glitter of the white tops was so powerful they could see it from the many miles away they were.
“This is what you see all the time?” she asked as he rose higher and higher into the air.
“Yes,” he said with a little laugh. “And it’s reactions like that, that remind me to stop and look every now and then, to appreciate this.”
“I can see why.” Riss looked around some more. “Thank you for this.”
“You are very welcome,” he said sincerely, glad that she had gotten over her initial fear, and would be able to enjoy herself as he took them over Cadia, showing her all of the territory that she’d never seen before.
***
They spent the day in the air, several hours of flying around. At one point another pair of dragons crossed their path and Riss got to see up close and personal the difference in flight ability between a Guardian like himself, and two normal shifters who were just happy to get aloft.
He dove and weaved through the sky while she laughed in delight, the other two dragons simply content to witness them as they awkwardly flew along to their destination, wings working far harder than was necessary.
At the end of the day, he returned to the stone and they walked back across town to her place. He thought about inviting her back to his apartment in the city, where he stayed when he wasn’t at the family estate or at the Academy. But he didn’t want Riss to feel uncomfortable, so he refrained. Instead he followed her home, their hands intertwined the whole time.
“So, are you going to take off on me again this time?” she asked as they reached the landing outside her doorway.
“Well, wouldn’t I have to be kissing you first before I could do that?” he said.
His tone was light and joking, but the look in his eyes let her know that he was well aware of the mood just then. There was no rain to distract them, no sudden rush into each other’s embrace. It was more of a slow burn during the day, embers flaring to light as fresh fuel was added to the fire.
The first flickers of flame appeared as he pulled her close with a gentle tug on her arm. She bit her lip, the look of anticipation stirring the winds in his soul in a flare of desire to do far more than kiss her.
A hand found his arm at the same time his fingers caressed her cheek, dropping until he could cup her chin, tilting it upward so that their faces were mere inches apart.
A tiny step forward closed that gap in half, and he felt Riss stiffen, her body going taut at his signal. Her own body swayed closer to him, lips missing his by fractions of an inch as they both took a deep breath.
Zander’s other hand found her waist.
Riss’s body stood still.
He tugged lightly.
She swayed once more.
His head dropped slightly.
She looked up at him, eyes widening momentarily before they closed just as his lips met hers. The dam broke, and Riss allowed herself to fall into the kiss completely, her fingers tightening around his biceps as she held him tight. The kiss was full and passionate, yet slow and delicate at the same time. There wasn’t the rushed heat of the day before, but instead a deeper, more fulfilling moment that wrapped them both up in it.
Neither pulled away as they explored each other’s mouths, their hands running over the body of the other, exploring it, learning it, and showing the other how much they liked it.
Zander’s hands pushed up the back of her neck and through her wind-stressed hair, fingernails scraping along her scalp. Riss paused in her kiss just long enough to make an appreciative sound before she threw herself back into him, her own hands coming up to grab his face and pull it even tighter to her as they rocked back and forth in each other’s embrace, uncaring of what the world at large might think of them.
Eventually they had to come up for air, and when they parted Zander was forced to take several deep lungfuls of air to help stabilize himself, so overwhelmed by the desire singing in his veins that he wasn’t sure what to do next.
Thankfully Riss wasn’t quite so frozen stupid.
She backed away from him with a smirk, her hand fumbling with the door, not turning around. At last she got it open, and backed inside.
Her gaze had so much in it, and yet it only had to say one word.
“Coming?”
Chapter Seven
Riss
Her heart rate accelerated faster than a race car as the big dragon shifter stepped forward, his powerful body filling most of her doorframe. She paused in her backtracking and reached up, brushing his unruly locks from his forehead.
“Gotta keep you looking presentable,” she teased.
“And how do I look from that angle?” he growled intensely.
Riss felt the breath leave her system at his animalistic noise. The beast in him was awakening, and directing itself at her. What was sex with a dragon even like?
A small portion of her brain noted that she wasn’t questioning whether she was going to have sex with him or not. That, in her brain, was already a foregone conclusion. Forget that she’d only known him a few days, and had gone on two dates. This was bigger than that. More powerful. This was no normal romance, she was sure of it.
Zander stepped forw
ard, the door closing behind him. His hands grabbed her waist, and without any noticeable effort on his part, lifted her from the ground and pressed her against the nearby wall, holding her there so that she could look at him in the eyes.
“And how do I look from this angle?” he asked.
But there was no time to answer as he stepped into her space before her lips could form the words. This kiss was rougher, but not in a painful way. Zander would never hurt her, she knew that. His stubble brushed against her skin, but even that didn’t bother her. He was rough, but in the right ways. His hands squeezed her cheeks as he held her up, and his muscles pressed against her, but there was no pain.
No real pain, anyway. His teeth nipped at her lip, driving her wild as shivers snaked their way down her neck.
“I like this angle better,” she finally managed to get out. They broke away for a moment to look at each other, the tension building as neither of them moved, waiting for the other to do something next.
Riss could feel herself rising to the moment, preparing for what was to come. The gnawing ache between her legs that she’d resorted to appeasing in the tub the past few nights returned with a vengeance, and this time it knew she was going to satisfy it.
The angle of their embrace had caught his shirt under her, pulling it even tighter over his thick slabs of muscle as he held her aloft. He was a feast for her eyes as she looked him over, getting heady from the flow of blood.
“Let’s get rid of this,” she suggested, tugging at his shirt.
Zander nodded mutely, putting her down as her hands lifted it up. He bent at the waist and allowed her to remove the shirt. Her eyes went wide as he stood up without it, the perfectly defined partitions of his body falling back into place, revealing a sculpted statue worthy of the gods.
“Oh my,” she said weakly.
The powerful shifter stepped toward her, and she hesitated as he went to start undressing her.
Zander froze. “Is everything okay?” he asked cautiously.
