“It’s actually pretty good. We should collect a bunch more. Are we planning on sleeping out here? We’re losing daylight.” She looked around. “We could camp here.”
Nikolai shook his head. “Not so close to a food source. Some of those it attracts might consider us nibble worthy.”
“Oh.” Aria looked a bit embarrassed, but it hadn’t occurred to Lucas either. Keeping himself safe in back alleys of a city, no problem. He was a fish out of water in this forest.
Grimacing, he cracked the shell and sampled the nut within. His brows rose. A moment later, he was collecting an armful. When Aria followed suit, Nikolai took off his shirt and handed it to her.
“Wrap them up in this. They will be easier to carry.”
The move left the big man in a sleeveless tee shirt that, by the impressive sculpting visible beneath, was thin as paper. Aria took a moment to accept the offering—she seemed riveted by the shoulder and arm musculature thus revealed.
Lucas glared at him. The man was too damned perfect. It was easy to forget that deep inside the big guy was something dangerous as hell. The shirt was also soaked in dried blood along one edge. Aria bundled the stiffened cloth so that it was on the outside.
Nikolai reacquired his broken branch and poked the tree until they had a healthy stash of nuts collected in the shirt. He took the bundle from Aria, tied it adeptly into a makeshift pack, and slung it over one shoulder. Then he led them through another near impossible tangle of prone trunks, sticky vines, and trailing moss that Lucas surveyed with deep suspicion.
After another hour of clambering over and through, the light was almost gone. Nikolai led them past a quiet pond and up onto a rock ridge that took them away from the moss and branches.
“This should work for the night,” he declared.
Lucas looked around. “Not exactly five star.”
The manner in which Nikolai glanced at him led him to believe that the man had no idea what he meant. Lucas guessed that a desert upbringing lacked a certain degree of worldliness.
Nikolai gestured back to the forest. “We can gather moss to sleep on.”
“So long as it doesn’t come with guests,” grumbled Lucas, before taking another bite of a nut. They were actually pretty tasty.
Nikolai pointed to where water trickled over the rock face. It formed a small stream that meandered toward the pond. “I think that should be drinkable.” He gestured to the forest. “Don’t stray far from the rocks. I can sense big predators out there. I’m going to gather wood for a fire. It might get cold overnight.” He vanished back into the forest.
Lucas slapped at another insect and glanced toward Aria. She’d stepped into the forest at the base of the rocks and was pulling up the ground moss.
Lucas joined her, shaking out the handfuls and grimacing at the things that dropped out to scamper across the ground. Once the barrage of life abated, he tossed the hunks up onto the rocks. “Are we sure following this guy is a good idea?”
“No,” Aria admitted. “But my instincts say we can trust him.” She shrugged. “The times I haven’t listened to them, I’ve come to regret it.”
Lucas sighed. “At least you no longer have to work for that lowlife Udo. I guess there is a silver lining on every cloud.”
Aria stiffened. “As a bodyguard, I don’t get to pick and choose my employer.”
Lucas raised a brow. “I guess being a Dragon, you were in demand.”
The amber eyes flashed. “It is handy, but I don’t need my Dragon to do my job. I was trained by mercenaries, and have been fighting since birth. I’m a damned good bodyguard.”
Lucas’s mouth opened, and then closed again, before he said, “So you were trained?”
She skewered him with her glare. “Why would you think I wasn’t trained?”
Lucas experienced a stab of guilt. He’d written her casual arrogance off as a Dragon shifter thing, as most he’d run into possessed it. “Sorry,” he said. “A lot of bodyguards just pick up the gig because it’s lucrative. I assumed you used your Dragona form to intimidate.”
Focused as he was on the moss, he didn’t see her coming. But suddenly he found himself tossed up against a tree, with her talons at his throat.
“I don’t need my Dragon,” she hissed.
He should be intimidated, but his entire body vibrated as though those talons were skating through his sensory hairs instead of fastened around his throat. And when her eyes, only inches from his own, gleamed at him, his heart accelerated.
Did she feel it too? The zing along every nerve ending?
He cleared his throat. “I can see that.”
