Lucas spotted the rocks. “Heys, that’ll works.”
Aria took advantage of his momentary distraction and pounced. She wound her forefingers around the base of his wings.
Lucas’s reaction was immediate and violent. He exploded—twisting, writhing, and snapping at her like a maddened creature. Despite the differences in their size, it was all she could do to hold on to him.
“Lucas!” she shouted. “Stops it! I haves to pilots us in. It is the only ways to gets us boths downs.”
He heaved once more, and then hung, panting and shaking, in her grip. Her gut twisted into knots, but Aria forced herself to focus on the ridge below. Lucas’s weight would make it interesting enough without him tossing them off balance.
“Stays very still,” she told him. He didn’t respond, but his body beneath her talons was rigid as a board.
Gritting her teeth, Aria hovered, then folded her wings into drop her down between the trees and onto the rocks.
The second her hind legs touched down, Lucas tore away from her, and she let him go. He morphed as he moved, so by the time he spun to face her, he was himself again.
Himself, and totally naked.
It so distracted her that it took her a moment to realize he glared at her, his eyes sparking emerald.
“Don’teverdo that again,” he snarled.
“What?”
He waved his hands in the air. “Grab me like that. Without warning.”
Aria sighed as she embraced the change to human. His eyes widened—okay, maybe she’d deliberately flashed him some naked human bits before growing her scales over them. But there was no doubt that some of the irate fire died in his eyes—replaced by a slightly glazed expression.
She turned away from him to pick up her tail spike. It wasn’t as large as usual, and lacked the crystalline glow, but it would serve for now. She also picked up his version—respectable considering his size, a wicked and perfectly serviceable knife, which she handed to him. “Would you have listened to me if I’d told you that landing was too much for your current flying skills?”
He snatched it from her hand as though afraid to touch her. The green had retreated to the outer fringes of his black irises. But some tension drained from him before he answered. “Yes.”
She raised a brow. Despite her resolution not to, her eyes drifted lower.
Lucas spun away.
Her eyes traced the surprising width to his shoulders, and the lean muscles that hugged his frame. They followed the dusting of darker spots against his brown skin, and the strange line of stiff hairs that chased along his spine to the twin curves of his buttocks. And her heart constricted at the fine tracery of fresh scars crisscrossing nearly every inch of what she saw.
Demeti had a lot to answer for.
But she had to push, because no way he was being honest with her, or himself. “So if I’d asked nicely, you would have let me grab you to help us land?”
His ribs rose and fell as he sighed, and then admitted, “Okay, maybe not.”
His skin seemed to alter—small, red and gold scales erupted over it to form the Dragon shifter equivalent of tights. She watched in fascination as they hugged his thighs and chased over his buttocks and back. They covered the skin—but the ridge of stiff hairs along his spine still showed between the scales.
By the time he’d turned around, he had a full bodysuit of very familiar red and gold scales. And she was more than a bit breathless. He wasn’t only a very handsome young man, he was also talented in ways she’d only just started to appreciate. She was even more impressed when she noted he’d regrown the talons from his fingertips. That he could achieve partial morphs with such finesse was impressive.
He met her eyes. “Let’s go find us a gate.”
* * *
Lucas and Aria had reached the town.
Nikolai tracked their progress with an ease that disturbed him. His ability to follow the ebb and flow of the life energies around him was getting more powerful by the hour.
It is your destiny. And you need to forget about her. She will only distract you from it.
The words disturbed him. It implied that the inner voice—or whatever it was—knew more about the future, and his role in it, than he was comfortable with.
