Aimee
It was the last day of leave, as she called it. Three days on, three days off. That’s how it went.
“You’d better not accuse me of stealing this time,” she told him as they made their way up the slope.
The day was overcast, but that wasn’t unusual for the middle of winter. Gray skies were the norm, and they wouldn’t let up for a few months yet. But it didn’t matter, because her spirits were as bright as could be. They were back up on the mountain, headed for his cave. Apparently he’d liked going shopping with her so much, he wanted to do it again. For that they needed more gold, so they were headed up there. Aimee wasn’t objecting.
He’d mentioned some other treasures he wanted to show her, and truthfully she was excited to see those as well. Artifacts from hundreds of years ago that had been lost to the world were now going to be discovered. She wasn’t an archaeologist, but it didn’t matter. It was a fascinating opportunity.
“I would never accuse you of something you are innocent of.”
Aimee could just imagine him rolling his eyes and she grinned. They’d spent much of the evening before in each other’s arms, neither wanting to be the first to leave. The giggles, cuddles, and pillow talk had been just as satisfying as the sex, if in different ways. Although she was still coming to terms that they’d slept together, at least she could say they’d done more as well.
It just seemed so soon. Three days, the first one of which she’d been convinced that he was as imaginary as a child’s friend. That’s all it had taken before they’d fallen between the sheets together. Wasn’t she supposed to show some resistance, to keep him at bay? Not because of propriety’s sake, but because she wanted to make sure it wasn’t a bad choice.
After all, how much did she really know about the dragon shifter?
For now she’d decided to try and ignore those thoughts and move on from them. It had happened, and that was that. It wasn’t like she regretted the sex—it had been, well, mind-blowing seemed too cliché—but her brain had shut off multiple times during it, so it seemed applicable at least.
She planted her walking stick and pushed off.
“Shouldn’t we be knee-deep in snow by now?” she asked to no one in particular, looking at the white landscape around them.
“Yes. I’m clearing us a path,” he replied from farther ahead, his voice distracted.
“You are? I mean, you can do that?”
“I can,” he confirmed. “And am. It’s relatively simple. You see, we’re not actually walking on ground level. I’ve been raising the earth up to meet us, so that we stay above the snow.”
“You’re serious,” she said, marveling at his calm explanation, as if altering the ground was no big deal.
“Of course I’m serious. I would never lie to you, Aimee.”
“Good. Keep it that way, mister.”
They paused briefly to look adoringly into each other’s eyes before resuming the climb. She was all bundled up, while he took the lead in a pair of jeans and a formfitting sweater he’d procured from somewhere as well. It irked her that the cold didn’t affect him, but she supposed that was one of the perks of being more than human. Such was life.
All at once they reached the entrance to his cave. The path he’d been carving for them had allowed for an easy ascent that should have taken hours longer than it did.
She looked back down the slope behind them. “That’s damn convenient.”
He ducked inside. “Come on now. I promise not to chase you around this time.”
“Oh, you can chase me,” she teased. “Just not with the intent to eat me at the end!”
The shadows in the cave were dark, but they were still near enough the entrance that she could see his face when he replied.
“Are you sure? Because you seemed okay with it last night…”
All at once she was thankful for the shadows, as they hid the redness in her face.
“That is not what I meant. And where the hell did you learn that term?” she snapped without anger.
“You. You cuss like a sailor sometimes, you know that, right? In between one session or another you told me to ‘eat me,’ remember?”
She did. Damn, that meant she was responsible for all the bad habits he was picking up. Although, she thought fondly, he was particularly adept at following through on that one…
“That doesn’t mean you get to turn around and use the line on me, though.”
Rhys stepped closer, picked her up, and kissed her rather thoroughly without any explanation before setting her back down. Aimee was still seeing stars when he spoke again.
“I’ll turn you around any time I want.”
His hand smacked against her rear startlingly, making her yelp.
The walls of the cave shivered slightly in response.
“Uhhh.” It was a genius line, the best she could come up with. “Did I just cause another avalanche?”
She was acutely aware of the fact that they hadn’t stopped coming even while she was off-duty.
“No, my cave is reinforced against noise from the inside. Otherwise our friendly little game of chase when we first met would have triggered the entire mountainside.”
She snorted loudly in the dark. “You have a really, really warped sense of what is ‘friendly,’ do you know that? The manners of a caveman.”
“You take that back. My father was a caveman, I’ll have you know!”
“Really?” she asked eagerly.
“Well, he’s a man, and he lives in a cave.”
She groaned. “All dragons live in caves!”
“Technically not true. Some live in glaciers and sand dunes.”
Rolling her eyes, she turned in a random direction and started walking away.
“Be carefu—”
“Ow!” Her shin slammed into something mostly solid that clinked.
“There’s a pile of gold there.”
“Of course there’s a pile of gold there,” she laughed. “Where isn’t there one in here. God, you’re a hoarder worse than those on TV.”
“I don’t know what those are, but is it really such a bad thing that I have so much gold and treasures?”
“Uh, no,” she admitted awkwardly. “Not really I guess. Especially if you continue to want to spend some of it on me.”
He chuckled, the sound echoing in the chamber. “I thought not. So be good, or I’ll track down your team and tell them wildly embellished stories of just how girly you are. You’ll never live it down.”
Aimee gasped. “You wouldn’t!” He looked at her. “You would!”
“I am the mighty Rhyolite,” he said with false dramatics. “Of course I would.”
“Oh boy. Full of yourself too. Boy do I know how to pick ‘em.”
They smiled and he walked over to embrace her, before sliding a hand down her side and lifting her leg off the ground, where he proceeded to rub it. The pain had faded ages ago, but the gesture was both cute and endearing. Almost.
“Uh, Rhys?” she said after a moment.
“Yes?”
“Wrong leg.”
The mighty dragon shifter just sort of sagged in defeat in front of her. Aimee tried her hardest, but she couldn’t contain her laughter. She fell into him, arms wrapping around his rock-hard stomach, holding onto it as she howled, not at his mistake, but at his reaction.
“I was trying,” he said stubbornly.
“I know.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “I know.”
He accepted the kiss and held her tight, shaking his head at himself. Aimee almost felt bad for him. Everything he did with her seemed to start out wonderfully, and then just somehow go south. Their first kiss, first date, now this. The poor shifter had to be wondering why she was still with him. The truth was, it made him seem all the more human in her eyes.
“You can make it up to me if you want,” she said, deciding to spring her idea on him.
“I need to make up for rubbing your wrong leg?” She could almost see the sarcasm dripping from his words it came off so thick.
“Well ,my other one still hurts, so yes.”
He sighed, picked up her up, and put her over his shoulder, and then began to rub both legs.
“Hey! What is this?” she yelped.
“Me ensuring I don’t miss anywhere,” he replied, the timbre of his voice not changing.
Then he kept rubbing higher and higher on her leg.
“Hey, easy there,” she warned as he got friskier. “You can miss that. We’re in public.”
Rhys chuckled and gave her bum a nice squeeze before setting her down. “Of course, though there’s nobody around.”
She grinned. “I know. Which is why you’re going to take me flying.”
Hook. Line. Sinker.
“I am not a horse,” he protested, but she could tell he already knew it was a losing argument.
“Nope, you’re better. You’re a dragon, and not just any dragon. You’re the mighty Rhyolite.”
“Now you’re mocking me,” he complained wryly.
“True, but you gave me that line, so really it’s your own fault.”
Rhys grinned at her. “Very well, feisty human. I will take you up.” His expression turned stern and serious. “But there are some rules you are going to follow, understand?”
She nodded, understanding the situation. Aimee was going to get what she wanted, but she had to obey him while up there.
“Both hands stay on me at all times. No flinging them up in the air. No exceptions.”
“Done.”
“Second, if I give you a command while we’re flying, no matter what, you will obey it, and instantly. No matter what it is.” He repeated the last part for emphasis. “You can question me after you do it. Not before. If I have to tell you to do something, there is a very good reason for it that I might not have time to explain then and there. Okay?”
Aimee swallowed as the craziness of what she was about to do set in. This was no helicopter joyride. She was going to fly on the back of a real, honest-to-goodness dragon. Her mind’s eye could picture it now, wind whipping at her hair as they dove, banked and soared high on thermals, free of technology and just gliding through the sky.
“Do you agree?”
“What?” She’d been daydreaming. “Sorry, yes, of course. I understand it’s risky.”
“That’s…an understatement. One wrong gust of wind will send you flying if you aren’t holding on tight. It’s not like I have a saddle or anything.”
She grinned.
Rhys’s eyes narrowed immediately with suspicion. “This had better not be where you tell me you brought along a saddle,” he warned.
Laughing, she shook her head. “No, no saddle. I did bring a length of rope though.” She shrugged when he frowned. “What? I like to be prepared.”
“You planned this all out from the start, didn’t you?” he accused her.
“Bet your ass I did. Seriously, how could you think I wouldn’t want to do this? It’s practically the first thing I thought of after I realized that you were a dragon, and got over how hot you were as a human.”
The last part slipped out accidentally, a thought that had become verbal unintentionally.
“Is that so?” he rumbled happily.
“Yeah, but then you turned around. Damn cute ass though,” she said, giving it a hard pinch before digging in her backpack for the rope.
“You have got to be the least ladylike woman I have ever courted,” he muttered.
“Yet you’re still here.”
“I am.”
“And you’re about to let me tie you up with rope.” She winked suggestively.
Out of nowhere the earth rippled and moved, leaping up to latch onto her. Bands of rock as smooth as metal wrapped tightly around her ankles while more of it humped up her back and reached out to snag her wrists, pulling them apart. The last bit of it settled in behind her head, so she could rest upon it.
“That,” he growled throatily as the fingers of one hand ran feather-soft along her cheek, his other hand slipping below her waist and between her legs, “is because I don’t need rope.”
Aimee went very still, the only sound that of her heart pounding in her ears. The casual display of power and sexual appetite toward her had been so abrupt and overwhelming that until he’d spoken she’d felt a little shiver of fear.
Now though, he kissed her and the rock began to melt away, at which point he swept her up into a proper kiss.
“Okay,” she gasped as they broke. “That was fucking hot. Little scary, but holy shit I want you so badly right now.”
His fingers were still putting exquisitely delightful pressure between her legs, but now he pulled away. “You’re going to have to keep on missing that,” he said quietly, speaking right into her ear so that his hot breath washed over her skin, giving her tingles. “Because we’re in public.”
Abruptly he stood up and moved away.
“Cruel. That was cruel,” she complained. “All that sexy, powerful buildup of control, and now you just wave it all away?”
He grinned. “Do you want to go flying or not?!”
“Yes please.” She did, but in the back of her mind she was still pinned to the rock, completely at his mercy as Rhys took her there in his cave. The scene played out over and over again as she ran the rope through her fingers, wondering if he would use that on her later instead…
“Stay back,” he warned as she started to follow after him when he walked away. “I need some space for this.”
All at once her focus was back on the presence. Here it was. He was going to change into his dragon, and she was going to get to see one of the mythical beasts up close and personal—and without it trying to eat her!
“Are you ready?” he asked after moving across the cavern.
“Yes. But I can’t really see anything.”
“Give it a moment,” he rumbled, and she thought his voice had changed, deepening, though still full of that melodious bass that was his trademark.
Light began to glow from somewhere near him. No, correction, from within him.
“What? I didn’t get to see you change!” she complained.
“There is nothing to see,” he informed her. “It happens so fast, you see nothing.”
“Oh.”
Rhyolite paused. “Well, are you coming?” He crouched down to the floor, spreading out a glowing wing toward her like a ramp.
“Not only yes, but hell yes!” she shouted, running over to him. “Take me to the moon!”