Page 46 of Dragon Cursed
Gods help him, with the look she was giving him, he wanted to strip her bare — peel back the layers himself — then dissolve the clothes he’d just wrapped himself in, and forget the rest of the world existed for the next hundred years.
“We leave as soon as you can ride,” he said quietly instead.
She nodded and pulled on the gloves while he watched from across the chamber, memorizing every small movement without meaning to.
The way loose strands of hair slipped across her cheek.
The way she pressed her lips together while flexing her fingers inside unfamiliar leather.
The lingering exhaustion shadowing her eyes despite the fresh clothes and warmth wrapped around her body.
His cavern had held nothing but silence for hundreds of long, lonely years.
Now her presence clung to every shadow and flame-lit stone.
And somewhere deep beneath his ribs, his dragon watched her with possessive, dangerous attention, as though already mourning the moment she would be gone.
Without thought, Alsander closed the distance.He needed to touch her.Assure himself she was still there.Still safe.His knuckles brushed the small bright stone she wore.
The pendant was warm.
The pendant was always warm now.
"Come."
He took her hand and led her up the long stone passage and out of the lair into the green dim of the dawn wood.A waterfall thundered to one side.The trees rose around them in a ragged crown.The sky between the leaves was the color of old pearl.
There was a small clearing beside the falls where the trees didn’t grow.He led her to its center.
"Stand here.Don’t move.I am about to be much larger than you."
"I have noticed."
His mouth tried to smile.He didn’t let it.
"When I am the dragon, I will lower myself to the ground.You will walk to my left shoulder.There is a place where the spine ridges meet the wing-root.You will sit there.My magic will hold you.You will not need to grip.You will not be cold.You will not fall.Do you understand?I will not let you fall."
"I understand.”Her voice was very small.
He stepped back from her.Didn’t let himself look at her face.If he looked one more time he was going to walk back across the clearing, gather her up, and carry her bodily to her cottage on his own two human feet — and that was twelve miles he couldn’t afford.
He turned and walked to the far edge of the clearing.
He had spent the last hour with the dragon pressed against the inside of his skin — snarling, fighting Laoch through him, fighting thewantof him through him — and now he gave the dragon what it wanted.The dragon came up out of him in a single smooth uncoiling that didn’t hurt the way the others had hurt.
He spread his wings to their full reach and lowered his great black head and looked across the clearing at the small bright woman in the dark cloak.
She wasn’t afraid.
He folded down to the moss.
She walked to his left shoulder.She had to climb a little — he tilted his wing-root to meet her — and her boots found the place where the great ridge of his spine softened into the pliant tissue at the wing's base.She settled there.
Her hands came up uncertainly, looking for something to hold.
He gathered the dragon's magic around her — a slow warm tether he hadn’t used since he had carried Mairin home from a frozen river when she was small — and wrapped it over Poppy’s shoulders.Around her waist.Across the tops of her thighs.He felt her startle when it took hold.Felt her test it.Lean her weight against it.Find that it held.
"Oh."Even with the dragon's ears, he heard her excitement."Oh, Alsander,oh."
