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We entered the farmhouse. Mason having easily kicked the door open. Inside, it was quiet and dark, and smelled like an old house—old wood, dust, mildew.
“We should block the door,” I said, considering how easy it had been for him to open it. Also, the deadbolt was now broken.
“Yeah,” he agreed, following my gaze to the broken deadbolt. “There’s a sofa over there.” I glanced in the direction where he pointed. It was ugly, with a pale pastel floral print that was faded and yellowed with age. We walked over to it and stood at either end. The cushions still had impressions in them from where its previous owners had sat, day after day. Possibly, for years, I thought.
“Ready?” he asked me, pulling me from my thoughts. I looked up at him. He gave me a half-smile.
“Yep,” I said. “Ready.” We both heaved. He ended up doing most of the work. I tried my best, but upper body strength was never my strong point. He dragged it over to the door, while I struggled to assist. When we had wrestled it into place, I stood back, rethinking the decision to do this.
“How are we supposed to get out?” I asked him.
“I’ll go open a window,” he replied, immediately walking off down the hallway and into the shadowy depths of the house.
“Find a strategic one,” I yelled after him. I heard him laugh. I walked through the house, looking about me. It was the strangest thing—everything from the original owners was still there, seemingly waiting for them to return. It was all covered in dust. The table still had two teacups sitting on it. The television remote sat pointed in the direction of the large, black, bulky dinosaur of a TV.
Feeling a bit like a ghost, I passed into the bedroom. The bed was neatly made up. The sheets were white and yellowed with age. There was a dusky pink bedspread over the top. I realized that I had expected to find a body with a grim disappointment. I sat down on the bed, bringing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I was barefoot. My boots lay on the bathroom floor of Mason’s cabin...no, wait. They were now incinerated. I would never see them again. All my hard work...ashes beside a lake. I wondered if I would ever see my mother again. In that moment, I missed her deeply. I wondered if Talia and Jenny were even still alive. I wondered if I would still be alive for very long. I thought about death with a detached sort of feeling, as though it weren’t real. As if it wouldn’t actually happen to me.
Someday, I promised myself, if I lived through this, I would send my mother a sign that I was still alive and well. I searched my brain—we’d had no safe word. No inside jokes. We had been two people, just existing together. We fought. We talked about unimportant things—nail polish, my hair, her hair, my clothes, her clothes, my mother’s string of boyfriends. There was nothing that I could think of. Maybe a note, then. A tiny slip of plain, white paper. I’m fine, it would read. I wouldn’t sign it. That would be too risky. But she would know my handwriting, right?
“Hey,” Mason was at the doorway to the bedroom. I looked up from my feet, which I’d been staring at as I thought, wriggling my toes, which were painted black to match my nails.
“Hey,” I replied, giving him a half-smile. I reached up and felt the back of my head, which still throbbed a little. It was like having a dull ache, constantly there. I wondered what they had hit me with, but didn’t want to ask.
“You okay?” he asked me. He looked concerned. I nodded.
“As well as I can be, given the circumstances,” I said. I patted the bed beside me. “Come sit with me.” He walked over toward me. He seemed a little hesitant, but he came. He sat down beside me, kicking his Doc Martens off and onto the floor. He mimicked my pose, pulling his knees up to his chest. There was the slightest fraction of a space between us. I could feel him beside me—warm, electric. It gave me the chills. I wondered if it was because he was a dragon-shifter. I’d never felt this way around another guy before.
“I need to ask you something,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Why me?” I looked at him. His face was unreadable. He frowned a little, the barest flicker of his brow.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Why did you save me? I mean, you could have saved anyone else there. There were...a lot of people.” I shrugged. “You’re risking your life—actually, destroying your life—for me. I’m nothing special.” He reached out a hand as if to touch my arm, but hesitated. Finally, he seemed to decide something, and took my hand in his.
“The moment that I saw you,” he said, his gaze on our clasped hands, “I thought that you were an angel. You absolutely bewitched me. I saw so much life inside of you, so much brightness. I couldn’t let you die...not in that horrible way. I guess...I wasn’t really thinking, I was just doing. It’s like my body knew what needed to be done. So, I just did it.” I raised my eyebrows. How many guys would say that they were bewitched upon seeing you? How can a girl say no to that? Damn. He was more than the whole package. Chivalry? It’s not dead. Exhibit A, ladies.
“Do you regret it?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. He was staring me in the eyes with such intensity. He reached up, caressing my cheek.
“Not for a moment,” he said with such certainty.
I was on him in that moment, kissing him. He responded. I climbed into his lap, wrapping my legs around his waist. I was pulling his t-shirt off, over his head, and he was frantically pulling my clothes off. I slid off him, pulling down the borrowed boxers and my panties. He was unzipping his jeans, pulling down his boxers. Heat filled my stomach as his cock bobbed free of the waistband. I unsnapped my nude-tone bra, dropping it on the bed beside me.
He leaned over me, and his eyes were glowing, his irises suddenly orange. I placed my hand on his cheek, looking at them. His skin was hot to the touch. I gasped. He grinned, and smoke trailed out from between his teeth.
“Sexy,” I remarked. He laughed.
“I can’t help it,” he said.
“I like it. It’s...hot,” I said sarcastically. He laughed. I looked at his chest. His skin was taut and smooth, his muscles well-developed beneath his tattoos. I placed my hands on the sides of his torso, pulling him toward me. His cock was at the entrance to my pussy, which had gone slick for him. I moaned, wanting him. He was watching my face, flexing his hips a little.
“Please,” I begged.
“Are you sure?” My eyes widened in shock. He wasn’t sure how I felt about him.
“Yes,” I purred. “I want you.” He thrust forward, his eyes on mine, watching my face as I cried out. He filled me, and I felt my body writhe beneath him in pleasure. He flexed his hips, surging in and out of me. As he did, he massaged the small bundle of nerves at the top of my pussy, and I felt an electric burst seethe within my stomach. My heart beat rapidly. I bit my lip, and he smiled at me, his eyes still burning orange, like embers from a fire that refuses to die.
He leaned in, trailing kisses along the tender skin beneath my ear, down over the column of my neck. I buried my fingers in his hair, pulling on it. He inhaled sharply, his eyes on me. I grinned. I kissed him, biting his lip as I did so. He picked me up, still inside of me. He moved so that he was beneath me on the bed.
I arched my back, throwing my hair over my shoulders. His hands covered my breasts, his fingers teasing my nipples as I rode him. Rocking my hips. I began to lose myself, writhing over him as I began to come apart. The delicate muscles of my vagina began to convulse around him. His hands were at my waist, guiding me as I cried out, throwing my head back. He was hard and hot inside of me. I slowed my movements, gyrating my hips above him, riding his length slowly.
I watched his face as he began to let go. I was still coming, but slower now, his cock twitched, and I slid off him as he came, hot semen spilling across the flat surface of his stomach. We were both breathing heavily. I threw myself down on the bed beside him.
We were silent for a few moments. He reached over and took my hand. Part of me wondered if I was being a bit hasty. The other part of me was hungry, screaming for more. I looked over at him. He smiled at me. I kissed him, my mouth covering his. Our eyes were open, and I felt myself begin to become immolated by that brilliant, glowing orange. His skin was growing hotter. I wondered for the briefest seconds if this was dangerous. I realized that I didn’t care. I wanted him to take me again.
His arm was wrapped around my shoulders. My temple rested against his collarbone. He smelled of sweat and sex. His jaw rested against my forehead. Our breathing was just beginning to slow.
“Are we always going to be on the run?” I asked him. He sighed heavily.
“The Order has a lot of resources,” he said. “We’ll have to go off the grid permanently.”
“Do you think you could put up with me permanently?” I asked, running my finger over his sternum. He had a tattoo of a woman on his chest. Her face was skeletal, and her violet hair swirled over the center. There were crimson and yellow roses in a crown upon her head. Her eyes were lovely—dark and deep and mysterious, doe’s eyes. She had a rope noose around her neck, hanging down like a necklace. Black birds flew away from her in the distance.
“It’ll take some getting used to.” I nudged him lightly with my finger, running it over the noose around the woman’s neck.
“Who’s she?” I asked, tapping the tattoo with the tip of my finger.
“Ixtab,” he explained. “She’s the Mayan goddess who takes care of lost souls.”
“Why did you get it?”
“Witches choose which gods and goddesses to worship,” he explained. “I chose Ixtab. She’s an interesting goddess. She takes care of suicides, still-births, you know, souls who are lost... and she leads them to the World Tree.”
“Where is the World Tree?”
“At World’s end,” he replied simply. I was, essentially, face-to-face with the tattooed, skeletal face of Ixtab. It was funny—she seemed to be grinning at me, but then, she had no lips, her face frozen in a permanent grin inked into his skin.
“What are we going to do?” I asked him.
“We’ll have to hide if we want to live,” he replied. “The moment we are caught, the Order will kill us.”
“That’s no life,” I remarked. Only a day in, I was already tired of being on the run. I was already sick of feeling hunted.
“They won’t stop chasing us,” he reasoned. “The god of flames has marked us for his own. The Order from Boston won’t be able to shift fully until we have burned. It’s uncomfortable to not be able to take our dragon forms—it eventually becomes painful and they will go mad.”
“Are you in pain right now?” I asked, frowning. Was Mason running out of time?
“Not right now,” he replied thoughtfully. He seemed to be taking stock of himself. “I might be, later. But I don’t think that it’s going to affect me. I think it’s because I’ve forsaken the dragon god. His anger cannot hurt me.”
“What happened to you?” I asked, and he laughed ruefully.
“I was raised by a witch,” he replied. “I follow a Wiccan goddess. I never had any true feelings or loyalty for the dragon god. It was a mistake to take the blood oath, especially since I didn’t mean it.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I felt so alone after Marla died,” he said. “Meeting other dragons was amazing. They were able to tell me more about myself and my powers. They were able to show me the proper way to harness them. And they were so welcoming.”
“You drank the Kool-Aid from the dragon cult,” I said. “Rookie mistake.”
“Tell me about it,” he replied. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “But, I guess, if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have met you.” I sighed heavily.
“Now you’re getting all wishy-washy on me. That’s gross,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Sorry. I’m just really happy.” He was smiling down at me. I smiled back.
“So, we’ll hide,” I said, sitting up to look at him directly. “But we’ll be happy. We’ll live in a house with big windows and lots of sunlight.”
“And then what?” he asked with a small smile. I wrinkled my nose.
“We’ll make little half-dragon babies,” I said. I had meant it to be ironic, but as I said it, I realized that that might be nice. I knew that, unlike my father, Mason would definitely stick around. I knew that, even if we didn’t have kids, even if we didn’t have this conversation, he would still be sticking around. I wanted him to. It wasn’t just that he had saved me—he was dependable, kind and gentle, despite his rough looks. It was something that my life had lacked before, and I didn’t want to go back. He looked surprised.
“Really?” he said, and I saw hope in his eyes. It made me a little sad. I had to remember that he had been a foster kid.
“Yeah, I mean, you know,” I said, taking his hand. “I like you, and you like me... so...”
“Just, like?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “You totally have to romance me first. Then, if you’re successful, we’ll fall in love.”
“And make babies?” he sounded doubtful. I sighed.
“And live happily,” I said, as though it were obvious. “And yeah, if making little dragons would make us happy, then yes.”
“Will we get married?” Clearly, I had to be the creative one here.
“If we must,” I said, looking at him slyly. “I don’t know if I’m the marrying type. I guess it’ll have to be a shotgun wedding.”
“If we must,” he said, grinning, and pulling me to him. He kissed me.
“Where will we go first?” I asked.
“Iowa.”
“Ugh,” I complained.
“What’s wrong with Iowa?”
“Boring. Let’s go to Mexico,” I suggested.
“Mexico?” he asked doubtfully.
“Yes. Beaches, warm weather, fruity drinks?” I raised my eyebrows. “If you are on the run, then you must go to Mexico.”
“Then they’ll definitely look there first,” he pointed out.
“Then how about Europe? China? Siberia? I mean, if we’re going on the run, let’s go somewhere exciting.” I paused. “For so much of my life, I’ve just been in one place. Iowa just isn’t going to cut it for me, peaches.”
“Peaches?” He cocked his eyebrow. He picked the strangest times to play the tough guy.
“Yeah, you’re a pushover.” I poked him in the stomach playfully and his face relaxed as he laughed.
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yep. Right now, you are picturing running away to Europe with me,” I said lightly. “You are also thinking about how hot I’d look sitting on the beach in Mexico in a tiny black bikini, holding a fruity drink in my hand.” He thought for a moment.
“You’re right,” he said. “So much for Iowa. It would have been nice and quiet. Lots of places to hide.”
“I don’t do corn fields,” I said, laying back onto the bed. I snuggled up next to him and closed my eyes. “Anyway, hiding in plain sight is like, strategic. I can dye my hair. How do you think I’ll look as a brunette?”
“I’m sure you’ll look great.” He kissed me on the temple. My stomach growled loudly.
“Ugh. After all that exercise, I’m starving.”
“There’s no food here,” he said.
“I can wait until tomorrow,” I conceded. “But you are taking me directly to Denny’s. I want a Grand Slam after those sex Olympics.” As I drifted off to sleep, I listened to him laughing silently to himself.