Verdant Magic: A Standalone Dragon Shifter Adventure (Dragon Mage Chronicles Book 1)

by Aimee Easterling

  “You’re stunning,” he murmured, large fingers drifting soft as butterfly kisses across her cheek, down her neck, circling just above the collar of her grubby t-shirt.

  And why hadn’t she taken the time to change into Sabrina’s fancier duds? Or at least thought to shower away the dirt that always encrusted earth-witch skin after working intimately with the Green?

  Zane paused, seeming to sense her inner dialogue. He lifted one eyebrow, then threatened Amber with the only admonishment that could possibly have kicked her out of her wildly circling thoughts. “No second guessing or clothes stay on.”

  Well, that wasn’t happening. “I trust you,” she breathed. And then she released her final reservation as her dragon consumed her soul.

  Chapter 26

  She’s so beautiful, Zane thought.

  Amber lay beneath him, eerily innocent and at the same time more worldly than anyone he’d ever met. She’d seen death and destruction, had made difficult decisions that affected dozens of lives, had reasoned with the alien sentience that powered the Green.

  Despite all that...the soft skin of her belly quivered beneath his fingertips. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation as they gazed into his own. And her strong spine curved toward his fire as he sent teasing flames dancing across her succulent skin.

  “Too hot?” he breathed. The only answer was a hum so deep it descended into a purr, and he smiled. Not too hot then.

  “I’m using glamour now—fair warning,” Zane told his mate. Then added: “But I’m applying it to me, not to you. I want you to know how you make me feel...” Then he layered succulent magic atop his words as he offered the gift of his own innermost thoughts multiplied by magic into infinite truth.

  “Down here,” he told her, tracing the dirty arch of one instep with a worshipful fingertip and a burst of playful fire, “I see strength and grace. You’re strongly rooted, you know exactly who you are and want to be.

  “Even your ankles...” he paused, abruptly captured by the indentation where heel turned into leg. Who knew he had a foot fetish? But it wasn’t just his lover’s feet. It was every startling inch of her, every soul-shattering tilt of head and turn of phrase.

  He was going to erupt just from touching her blasted ankle. Closing his eyes, Zane took a deep breath and did his best to gather a few shreds of self control back into his addled brain. Words. He could manage words. His knack was what he did best.

  Then his witch was pressing slender fingers against flame-wreathed shoulder blades, drawing him down against her heaving chest. “Sometimes,” she murmured, pausing to nibble at an earlobe before continuing, “there’s such a thing as too much talking.”

  So he didn’t speak further. Instead, he worshiped her with hands, with flames, and with his lips. In fact, if his apple-scented earth witch hadn’t been due to embark on a perilous journey while bearing nothing except the clothes on her back, he would have been tempted to burn those pesky hindrances away to expedite unraveling the prize underneath.

  Instead, he lifted her shoulders with one broad palm and unveiled her beauty with the other. One layer at a time. Simple white bra, playful teal panties. Then there was nothing left but woman, man, and the flames that danced between the two of them while soft morning breeze rustled through both of their curls.

  Amber opened beneath him like a flower. Fright and insecurities forgotten, she writhed and moaned, scraped fingernails against his back until welts formed. Good, he thought. I’ll remember this tomorrow.

  Then one brave hand drifted lower to slide across the focus of his own pleasure. Tentative fingertips trailed a pathway of flames for a mere millisecond before Zane brushed her aside. “Not yet,” he ordered, his voice hitching. The slightest touch had nearly pushed him over the edge, and his partner’s pleasure came before his own.

  Slick, wet folds. A heated core that rivaled his own inner fire. A tender nub that vibrated beneath his tongue.

  “Oh!” his witch gasped, her body convulsing with pleasure.

  And, finally, Zane allowed himself to dive deep. To plunge his manhood into the hot center of a woman who had stolen his heart, his mind...and now, his soul.

  One last word, and then even that was gone.

  Perfection.

  ***

  Amber had expected pain. But instead, a blissful heat pulsed between her thighs, across her belly, suffusing her entire body with its glow.

  For a timeless eternity, she rode the high as Zane joined her in fiery ecstasy. His spark of life twisted around her own, his flame-filled hands stroking, soothing, pleasuring. Sweat saturated their skin, breath rasped through parched throats...

  ...And when the intensity of her arousal was almost too much to bear, her dragon’s flame once more sparked the willing tinder of her waiting body. She clenched down around the hard length of him as they exploded together into joint unity.

  My dragon, Amber thought with a smugly satisfied smile as her companion collapsed onto the platform beside her. Who knew I needed my very own dragon to feel complete?

  Said dragon reached over to pull her closer against his side, tucking her in so tight that her head rested atop one muscular shoulder. “I...” he began.

  Then the roar of a far less friendly dragon jolted them out of the sun-warmed post-coital haze. Zane was on his feet, his hands sending silken folds of flame licking across her body, before Amber even managed to close her gaping mouth.

  The fiery dress her lover clad her in should have burned, but instead it danced playfully in the breeze while shielding her nakedness from view. She felt protected, cherished, loved. And, for an instant, like the most beautiful woman who had ever lived.

  Was this really how Zane saw her? As a strong, fiery princess worthy of her very own magical ball gown?

  “A little notice would have been nice,” Zane grumbled, not bothering to hide his own nudity as he advanced upon the red dragon with clenched fists. As she’d suspected, the newcomer flared brightly then materialized into Nicholas—the bane of her existence, the thorn in her side, her upcoming partner in crime.

  Nicholas didn’t bother to reply to his brother’s complaint, just flared his nostrils and tossed familiar leather boots in Amber’s general direction. “Get dressed. We should have left five minutes ago.”

  An hour hadn’t passed yet. Or had it? Watcher glanced east, saw that the sun was more than a hand’s width further across the sky than when Zane had first laid her down upon the platform. Huh. So maybe she’d become even more engrossed in the loving caresses of her dragon than she’d originally thought.

  Then a stark wall of flame sprang up between Amber and the shifters, one more shield courtesy of her overprotective mate. Not that she minded being given her own personal changing room there atop the hydrogen balloon where the only other colors present were blue, blue, blue, and distant green.

  Poppa would have stood stock still for half an hour reveling in the view’s beauty, but Amber was a bit more down-to-earth. So she merely drew in one deep breath of remembered pleasure, then slipped into threadbare pants and shirt as quickly as possible.

  Finally, she wrinkled her nose in annoyance as she drew Sabrina’s boots toward her. Shoes had never been a top priority in the past. Why cut off contact with the Green when easy access could mean the difference between life and death?

  Now, though, Amber was glad of the captain’s foresight at sending shoes and socks along with the implied reminder of new friends waiting upon her return. After all, she and Nicholas would be traveling fast and hard overland, and her companion likely wouldn’t wait if she stubbed a toe or stepped on a sharp rock. Now she’d be able to think of Sabrina and smile as she paced her captor step for step.

  Footwear and friendship weren’t the wind witch’s only gifts, though. Deep within the toe of one borrowed sock, a hard lump slithered and slid before settling at her instep. And when she pulled the fabric back off her foot and peered inside, that sparkling blue butterfly fluttered against its woven cotton net.
r />   “Good thing Momma’s locket is empty after all,” Amber murmured.

  She’d thought the words were too quiet to carry beyond the barrier, but Nicholas’s voice grumbled a demand by way of reply. “Are you done yet?”

  Then came Zane’s voice, the honey faded and darkened to a rich but bitey blackstrap molasses. “Leave my mate alone.”

  Amber rolled her eyes—just what she didn’t need, to drive a wedge between two close-knit brothers with her mere presence. So she mimicked Sabrina’s motions as quickly as possible, snagging the clockwork insect with wings forcibly closed before carefully caging the device within her mother’s heart-shaped ornament. Finally, pulling on shoes and socks at long last, she stepped around Zane’s barrier to find two shifters eying each other with distrust and anger evident on both of their faces.

  “Get over it,” she told the air between them. Then, stepping into the space her words had recently rolled through, she paused before her own shifter. “I’ll miss you,” she promised, reaching up to place the barest hint of a farewell peck on his cheek.

  “Be careful,” he growled by way of reply, his hands clenching down so hard they almost bruised. Then his lips pressed against hers, deepening the kiss into a prelude of passion to come.

  Zane didn’t want to let her go. Well, Amber didn’t blame him—she didn’t want to go either. But they each had responsibilities beyond their own wishes. So she reached up and gently opened his fisted hands one finger at a time until each large appendage lay cupped between her smaller digits. At last, easing away from the magnetic force that was her mate, she promised: “I will.”

  Then she turned away from what she hoped would become her future and faced her present instead. Nicholas was even more morose than usual, his brow lowered and his arms crossed as if blocking out the public display of affection. Wordlessly, he stooped, lifted the opened circlet Amber had abandoned an hour earlier, and held it out in front of him in silent command.

  Right. She wasn’t just agreeing to infiltrate an abandoned laboratory and save a kidnapped senior citizen. She was agreeing to do all that and more while under the influence of a magic-quenching artifact.

  Just my luck.

  “Is that really necessary?” Zane growled, insinuating himself between Amber and his brother once again.

  And while she appreciated her lover’s protective gesture, the collar wasn’t a deal breaker. She still possessed woodland experience and knowledge of experiments from both before and after her parents’ deaths. When it came right down to it, the latter was all she really needed in order to figure out which seed was most likely to prevent her dragon from Fading away.

  So she bypassed Zane and accepted the magical restraint without further commentary. Ignoring the cold that shot through her body, she closed her eyes and snapped the metal closed around her own sensitive skin.

  “I’m ready,” she offered at last, stepping into the wrong shifter’s arms. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 27

  To Amber’s surprise, it wasn’t her traveling companion who turned the ensuing trek into a disaster. No, her primary hindrance was the Green.

  Vines reached up and grabbed at her elbows. Roots appeared out of nowhere to trip her feet. And she could have sworn every gnat within a ten-mile radius had decided to swarm her sweaty face at the same moment, producing a cloud so massive she was afraid to open her mouth for fear one might fly inside.

  “Is this what it’s like to be an ordinary person?” she mused aloud, rolling Charlie’s ring around in her pocket between thumb and forefinger. She could smooth her path using the small store of stockpiled magic that came along with her friend’s gift...but the ring wouldn’t turn the Green aside for more than a half dozen steps. No, better to save the walnut circlet for a real emergency rather than blowing her entire wad over a little discomfort now.

  “Hmmm?” Nicholas replied absently. Three feet in front of her, the shifter dodged each obstacle as adroitly as Amber had once walked through the forest on her own bare feet. In fact, he’d plugged earbuds into his tablet and zoned out to the tune of Momma’s endless string of data nearly as soon as they hit the ground. And even though the Green wasn’t pleased by even that small draw of electricity, Nicholas was agile enough that not a single passing vine had managed to grab the device out of his hand...at least, not yet.

  Now, her companion swiped the screen to pause the recitation and turned around to face her. “The data,” he started. But then Nicholas finally seemed to take in the sight of her dirt-streaked face and sweat-soaked hair. “You’re not looking so hot,” he said instead.

  “On the contrary. I’m feeling quite hot,” Amber replied. It was a sorry sort of pun, but the best she could come up with when stuck in a forest that no longer recognized her as a friend and instead considered her a newfound foe. It didn’t help that her companion was a dragon shifter who, so far as she could tell, wished she didn’t exist.

  Given his previous behavior, Amber thoroughly expected Nicholas to snap back a curt rebuttal. But, instead, he dropped heavy pack onto damp forest floor and rummaged inside for a couple of seconds before dredging up two water bottles. Plastic crinkled beneath firm fingertips as he tossed one her way, and Amber leapt to capture the gift as if it was her salvation.

  The liquid inside was tepid and stale, with none of the vibrancy of water cleansed by the Green for her personal pleasure. But the last time they’d neared the banks of a stream, the forest had created an impenetrable barrier between herself and the precious liquid, weaving thorns, vines, and tree trunks into a near-solid wall. At this point, Amber would take whatever she could get.

  “Nuts?” Nicholas asked, dropping down onto the leaf mold to lean against his pack as they both enjoyed a much-deserved rest. Amber followed suit, pressing her weight against a tree trunk for a split second...before thorns popped out of the bark to prick through her clothing and poke at her skin. Okay, so maybe she didn’t really need a backrest after all.

  “Yes, I think I definitely am nuts,” she muttered beneath her breath. And to her surprise, the shifter not only laughed—a deep, rolling chuckle that reminded her of Zane—he also tossed a baggie of trail mix in her general direction.

  “Eat,” he suggested. “We’re almost there, which means we need a game plan.” Nudging an inquisitive vine aside with one absent elbow, he pulled the tablet back out and swiped quickly across the screen to bring the processor to life. “Assuming Sarah slowed Baine down and he hasn’t reached the lab before us, the question becomes—which seed do we start with?”

  Amber bit her lip, pondering well-remembered data. Momma had talked about favorite jumping-off points so often that the seed codes now resembled pet names for distant cousins whose stories she knew without ever having met them face to face. “The LZ series has a lot of potential,” she suggested tentatively. “Their parent plant was fast-growing and malleable. And the inserted genes should have added a bit of additional resiliency.”

  “Hmmm.”

  That wasn’t a particularly encouraging response. So Amber tossed out another of Momma’s favorite theories. “The TR strains might be worth looking into as well. I know the poison-ivy heritage seems dicey, but...”

  “I’ll stop you right there,” Nicholas interrupted. His face was grim, his voice quiet as if he almost thought the Green might overhear his words and swallow up potential betrayers.

  He wasn’t necessarily wrong either.

  “We don’t have time to breed these plants for twenty generations until we find something that could eventually do what the original scientists hoped for. We have to think outside the box and pick the one plant most likely to succeed. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the facility is under fire, quite literally. The seeds might not be around tomorrow. My brother might not be around tomorrow.”

  Amber shivered. “Zane told me about the Fade. But he really looked okay to me....”

  “Not to me.”

  Before her companion could elaborate, though, he’d co
cked his head and jumped to his feet. Around them, the forest remained still and quiet...until, that is, the tremulous scream of an injured woman cut through the afternoon air.

  “We’re walking in circles.” Baine’s voice was almost unrecognizable as he roared out his rage far too close for comfort. “There’s less to go on down here than there was in the air, not more. You lied about where we were then and you’re lying about what the papers say now!”

  Flesh struck flesh. Sarah shrieked again, but this time more quietly as if her pain was muffled by an aggressive hand. And, abruptly, Nicholas lost all interest in the scientific side of their expedition.

  “Catch.” The tablet—Momma’s memory card inside—spun through the gap between two vines to land in Amber’s waiting hands. “There’s a map on the home screen. If I can, I’ll come back for you. If not—” Nicholas shrugged “—I’m sure you can find your own way out.”

  And just like that, her captor, her guide, the only possible source of fire to knock that dratted collar loose from around her neck, sidestepped a tangle of greenbriers and was gone.

  ***

  In Momma’s stories, Washington, DC, was a gentrified city full of tree-lined streets, underground metro stations, and high-class restaurants. That was Before. Now, Amber struggled for fifteen minutes to make it down what must once have been a single city block, and she almost didn’t see the entrance to the office building hidden beneath layers and layers of interwoven vines.

  The door, though, opened easily beneath her questing fingertips. Well, of course it did when the hinges were rusted through, baby trees taking root in the rotted leaves accumulating beneath her feet.

  Behind her and far too close for comfort, the recent cacophony of yelling transitioned into an ominous flapping of wings. Amber hoped that was a good sign. Hoped that Nicholas had crept up on his prey adroitly enough to pull Sarah to safety before he was discovered. Hoped the raging roars and flashes of fire now exploding in the distance were a sign of her lover’s brother scaring the moon-marked dragon away before calling his strike a glowing success.