by Ruby Ryan
I wrapped my fingers around his throat to make the laughter stop.
He gargled, and reached a weak hand up to stop me, but I knocked it away with ease. I tightened my grip and the laughter ceased, but the mirth never left his eyes.
I have defeated you, he said, with his eyes and smile and thoughts inside my head. You may have won this battle, but now you have lost the war.
I added my other hand to his throat and squeezed as hard as I could. He made a choking sound, and his face turned a shade of crimson to match the dragon scales from before. I let my emotions guide my hands: fury that he'd damaged the totem, anger at the ordeal he'd put us through, the fear for Harriet's safety, both during my entire journey here and for what the future held. I let the gryphon inside of me take over because it wanted this, needed to watch the life leave the dragon's veiny eyes, and if I couldn't tear him apart with my talons then this was the next best thing.
"You haven't defeated anything," I muttered as I waited for him to die.
30
HARRIET
The hate was so terrible it almost made me cry.
Arnold was safe, and I was pulling Chidi out of the wreckage when I felt it. A new fire within Roland, my love and mate, billowing inside of him with more power than the volcano in the distance.
When Chidi was a safe distance away I patted his cheeks, checked to make sure his airway was clear, then began chest-pumps. He gasped immediately, coughing and wincing with pain, and his eyes fluttered open.
"What..." he said, but I smiled and shushed him with a finger.
"You're safe now. Just relax."
The hate from Roland continued to rise, and I stood and turned toward him. He knelt over the other man, the dragon. He was squeezing the life from him.
"No!" I screamed.
My voice extinguished the hate instantly; I felt it pour out of Roland, absorbed by the thirsty African dirt. His eyes softened as he regarded me, and his fingers left the dragon's throat.
"You can't," I said, approaching. "He's beaten. I can feel it in my bones, and I know you can too. He can't hurt us anymore."
He can't turn into a dragon, was what I meant. I didn't know how I knew that, but I did. The totem in my pocket insisted it was true.
"Stay the fuck down," Roland said to the dragon, "so I don't have to upset my love."
Everything overwhelmed me then: the trauma from the crash, and the dragon, and the fight I'd just witnessed. My knees wobbled and everything grew dizzy, and in an instant Roland was there to catch me.
"I..." I said, blinking rapidly to try to steady my vision. "I'm sorry for... I don't know. I'm sorry for being..."
"Don't be," he said with warmth in his eyes. He brushed his thumb across my cheek. "Don't ever be sorry for being you."
He put his lips against mine, and he tasted like sweat and smoke.
The dragon's pained laughter interrupted us. "You..." He paused to cough blood from his mouth. "You can't kill me. Always give up. Too soft, like at the Somme over France."
I opened my mouth to tell Roland to ignore him, but I didn't need to.
I left Roland guarding the dragon and went to check on the others. Arnold looked shell-shocked and couldn't understand what was going on. Despite being unconscious when I pulled him from the wreckage, Chidi looked as right as rain now. He tended to Arnold, then went back to the wreckage to look for anything salvageable like a phone or radio.
"Let's back up a minute," I said when I returned to Roland. "Why are you here?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Not that I'm not happy to see you," I quickly said. "But..."
"I knew you were in danger." He pulled up the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face, giving me a quick glimpse of his rippling ab muscles. "It has to do with him. And," he said, putting his hands on my hips, "it has to do with this."
I realized he wasn't gripping my hips: he was putting his hand against the totem in my pocket. I pulled it out and held it out in my palm. Once again the crack in the ruby filled me with unexplained sadness.
"I thought so," Roland muttered, taking it from me and turning it in his hands. "I felt it break when the plane crashed. It hurt so much that I wrecked my own bloody jeep."
He jerked his head to the left, where a green jeep lay on its side some distance away. I hadn't even noticed it.
"What is it?" I asked.
He handed the gryphon totem back to me, and took a deep breath. "That's a long story."
"Since my research expedition is likely canceled, I've got time to hear it." I gave him a wry smile.
Roland pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. "Let's go see what he has to say first."
31
ROLAND
We didn't have to torture him. Which was good, because I didn't have it in me anymore. Whatever anger I'd felt before was gone, buried deep inside my chest along with my gryphon. While Harriet recorded the entire thing with my phone, I crouched next to the dragon and asked him one question at a time.
He answered my questions, and seemed almost gloating as he did. Like we were fools to not know what he knew. Children learning about the world for the first time. The dragon held nothing back as he responded to my queries.
The dragon told us everything.
Harriet took it pretty well, though she was probably in shock. I'd need to keep a careful watch over her to make sure she was okay. Now that the dragon was defeated, that was my primary goal: keeping my mate safe. It was the only thing that mattered, because as the keeper of the ruby totem she was keeping me safe.
And even though the ruby was cracked, all was not yet lost.
With our combined strength Chidi, Arnold, and I were able to flip the jeep back over. The engine started, thank goodness, and nothing else seemed to be leaking. We found some rope to bind the dragon's hands and feet, and since there wasn't enough room in the jeep we tied him to the roof like a piece of luggage. He screamed obscenities at us for the first 30 minutes of the drive, but eventually grew exhausted.
Harriet and I convinced them the dragon they'd seen was actually a large military drone piloted by the man tied to our roof, and in their mental state they accepted it without question. It sure as hell made more sense than the truth.
Tete was the first town we came across, a sprawling city with a population of 300,000 straddling the Zambezi River. The Mozambique Army had erected a checkpoint on the highway to search vehicles; the plane crashes in the area were suspected to be the work of pro-colonial separatist terrorists.
Which was convenient, since we had the perfect suspect to give them, and four eye-witness accounts of what he'd done. The dragon's lack of passport or visa records were just the icing on the metaphorical cake.
Once we were back in a city with a modicum of civilization, Doctor Arnold Cardiff began apologizing profusely to Harriet as if it were all his fault. We tried to protest and insist the events were outside our control, but he remained convinced he was to blame. We gave up and allowed him to book us rooms in a hotel--three rooms, not just two--and then he disappeared into his as if hiding from the world.
Harriet and I walked three blocks to a place called Raster's Bar and found a secluded table in the corner.
"Two whiskies," Harriet ordered, and when the waitress left she turned to me with an innocent look on her face. "Oh, did you want something?"
"You think you're funny."
"What," she said with a fake-confused look on her face, "is it rude to order two drinks for yourself without letting your date get something?"
I snorted. "I would hope, that after all we've been through, that you finally understand why I was acting the way I was."
She scraped her chair around to join my side of the table, then put her head on my shoulder. "I was just teasing."
"I know. So was I."
We sat there in silence until the waitress brought us our drinks, gave a silent toast and knocked them back, then ordered two more.
"Is what the dragon said true?"
> I stared at a point on the wall across from us. I could feel the totem pulsing in her pocket, brushing against my own hip. It was a third heartbeat joining ours together.
"All of it," I said. "All of it was true."
"Okay."
I turned to face her. "That's it? Okay?"
"I guess." She shook her head. "I just got here. And now I have to leave. Did you know what my week was like? I don't think I ever told you."
She explained that she'd been invited on the trip at the last minute, and crammed an entire semester's worth of classwork into a single week in order to go. So now she had three free months with nothing to do.
"Who says you can't complete your research?" I asked.
"Nobody says so. Logic says so. Arnold looks like he's never going to leave the Harvard library again. All of our equipment was destroyed in a plane crash. You remember that part?"
"I do seem to remember a plane crash, aye." I put a hand under her chin and twisted her to face me. "But who says we can't buy more?"
"I..." she paused. "I wouldn't know where to get it."
"We can find out."
"And even if I had the money..."
"You don't need to worry about that," I said. "You've got a new scientific sponsor. And he just so happens to be interested in..." I struggled for the words. "Elephants eating bee honey? Wait, no..."
"The effect of bees on elephant migratory patterns," she said, narrowing her eyes. "I knew you weren't listening when I explained it."
"Oh, I was listening. I just had no idea what you were talkin' about."
"We MIT elites like to talk down to the common folk."
She smiled, and I smiled with her.
"But I'm serious," I insisted. "What's stopping you from staying and doing the research on your own?"
In the end, nothing was.
32
HARRIET
We made some calls. Even without the esteemed Doctor Arnold Cardiff, most of the research paperwork and park approvals were already completed. The Niassa National Wildlife Reserve in north-east Mozambique was waiting.
Sourcing the equipment took a great deal longer. We sequestered Arnold in his hotel room before he flew home and got him to list everything we needed, including his contacts in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Roland I spent the entire next day making phone calls and arranging for everything. The African honey bees were the toughest thing to find in the quantities we needed, and the place we eventually ordered them from was a long way out of our way.
But that was fine, because we had all the time in the world.
Roland took me out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in Tete to celebrate. We had a van rented and waiting to leave the next morning, and it was loaded with most of the equipment we would need for the next three months. Elephant tracking devices and GPS signal relays. Tents and clothes, food and water and other supplies. Drones with cameras, so we could monitor the boundaries from the sky. Two rugged laptops for documenting everything, with external hard drives for daily data backups.
It felt strange to have everything done. Ready to go.
And even though I was doing it without Arnold, I didn't feel alone at all.
"There's one thing the dragon mentioned that you haven't finished explaining," I said while we finished the bottle of wine on our table.
"What's that, love?" Roland wore jeans and a button-down dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms. As gorgeous as he was wearing tight T-shirts, he was a hundred times sexier cleaned up a little bit. He gave me a roguish grin, and I tingled as I stared back at him.
"Gryphons." I pulled out the totem and placed it on the table. "He called you the Ruby Gryphon, and he mentioned your brothers."
"Aye. The friends of mine from Belize, as I said."
"But... you can turn into a gryphon."
"I can," he said simply.
"Well," I said, trying to sound aloof, "when can I see that?"
His lips pursed in a thin smile, and his cheeks blushed so red it almost matched his hair. He was embarrassed!
"Don't tell me you're shy," I said.
"It's not that." He looked coyly at me. "The thing is, we have to do something first. Before I can show you. At least, that's what Ethan told me..." His eyes narrowed lustfully, and I knew what he meant.
I finished my glass of wine and placed the empty glass on the table. "Let's get the check."
We had our hands all over each other by the time we reached our hotel room. Somehow we got the door open and stumbled inside; the only thing I was focused on was Roland's body, touching every inch of it, remembering the ripples and curves of his muscle.
It had only been a few days, but it felt like a lifetime.
We knocked over the bedside lamp and fell onto the bed. Roland's lips curled in a smile but I kissed them back into place, pressing my body on top of his, grinding my sex against the stiffness in his pants. While I did that his hands ran up my back, grabbing handfuls of my shirt and yanking them over my head, breaking our kiss momentarily. He returned his lips to mine, a possessive kiss that sent a tingle down my spine and into my sex. I fell sideways off him while keeping my lips on his, and pulled my pants off and kicked them to the floor, and I felt him do the same with his.
There wasn't time to remove my panties; I needed him too desperately, and his desire was even stronger. Pressing a hand on his chest I mounted him again, and pulled my panties to the side to reveal my dripping pussy lips. The heat from his cock was intense as I rubbed my outer lips against his shaft, coating him, and then I moved up enough for his head to brush against my slit and I pushed back, feeling the tip widen my lips and slide into place, and we moaned into each other's mouths.
I let it linger there, just the tip inside, before pushing down hard.
He cried out with ecstasy as I took every inch of him, all the way down to the base. I ran my hands through his silky auburn hair and watched him gaze up at me with love and lust, gasping at how wonderful I felt. I loved that I could make him feel this way; that expression on his face was put there by me, and me alone.
He was mine, and I was his, and not even a dragon could pry us apart.
I wanted to go slow and tease it out, but my thighs had a mind of their own. They rocked back and forth on his member, then squatted up and down off it, letting the grain of his cock rub against my inner walls. I tilted my head back and moaned as I rode him, the sexual release of everything that had happened like a bomb finally going off.
Roland reached up and grabbed a handful of my curls and pulled me back down to his mouth. His tongue forced its way into my mouth and danced with mine, tasting like red wine and cinnamon. I tightened my lips around his tongue and sucked on it, pretending it was his thick member that I was sucking off, and based on the way his grip tightened in my hair and the way he growled deep in his chest it drove him crazy with lust.
I rode him into the bed like a horse that needed to be broken.
And then Roland was leaning forward, sitting up enough to take one of my breasts in his mouth, sucking hard on the nipple. I inhaled sharply at the sudden intensity, and arched my back into him to let him know I wanted more. His fingers pawed at my other breast, clamping down onto my nipple almost painfully, but the combined stimulation was perfect right then, and I gasped and shivered while riding on his cock as my orgasms came suddenly and forcefully, wracking my entire body, shaking me like a volcanic eruption with fire and ash and smoke.
I was trembling when Roland lifted me into the air with his strong boxer's arms.
He held me up by my thighs, and I threw my arms around his neck to keep me from falling. I wondered where he was going to carry me but he simply held me in the air, moving his hips back and forth to guide his cock. I moaned anew as his lips found my neck and shoulder, my man taking over forcefully, taking what he wanted, because what he wanted was me, all of me, and I wanted him just as much.
"How do I feel?" I moaned.
"Ohh you feel fucken amazing," he
drawled in his sweet Irish accent.
He used his strong arms to bounce me up and down in time with his thrusts, cock shoving deep inside of me with each stroke, rubbing hard against my inner wall. I grunted from the intense pleasure with each bounce, letting out all of my inhibitions, because I didn't care who heard us, the only thing I wanted was to let Roland know how much I loved it, and wanted to hear the same from him.
His thrusts grew more rapid, and he almost stumbled and lost his balance, and I yelped as he bumped me into the wall. Using the wall for leverage he pumped harder, fingers tightening on my thighs, and he was growling like a wolf with eyes that glistened like rubies as he went faster and faster, voice rising, and I ran my fingers through his silky hair and gripped it tighter and tighter.
"Oh fuck!" he yelled, surprise on his face. "Oh God, oh fuck me! Oh Harriet!"
I screamed with him, letting out all of my energy as he thrust one final time, as deep as he could go. His hands held me there with his cock buried deep as he came, and I kissed him because to do anything else was impossible.
33
ROLAND
"I don't know if this'll work."
We'd been driving for over an hour, north-east to avoid Monte Muambe and the terrible ash inking the sky. Our plan was to cut through Malawi on the way to Niassa National Reserve, and we were nearing the border.
Harriet had been so excited she wanted to do it the moment we had driven outside Tete, but I still wanted some space. To ensure there was nobody within miles.
"Why wouldn't it work?" Harriet asked. She had her feet propped up on the dashboard of the passenger seat, and the wind outside was blowing her red curls all around. She didn't mind; I could tell she loved having the window down to smell the foreign smells.
