His full lips descended, pressing softly to the corner of my mouth. Gentle was not in his nature, but somehow it was the most tender touch I’d ever experienced. That tantalizing taste of Braxton was enough to have me clawing my hands into the ground to stop myself from yanking him into me.
As he pulled back, I swallowed down my scream of protest. I wanted more. More, more, more.
“Your dragon is rising, Jessa.” Braxton’s voice went even lower, but I barely registered it in my need. “Calm yourself, babe.”
The fire started in my center; my gut burned. Rising in plumes were the flames of my desire, my need. My dragon wanted Braxton and I had no idea why. My eyes locked on his with an animalistic intensity. His irises were no longer my favorite blue color. They had threads of yellow, threads of his dragon, as if our beasts were trying to get to each other.
“What’s happening?” My voice was harsher than usual. “I’m not sure I can control her.”
Braxton growled, loud in the cloying silence of the forest. “I know the feeling.”
I jumped to my feet. “We have to go.” I had to start moving again, I had to escape the emotions. Braxton must have understood my desire. Gracefully, he unfolded his lengthy limbs and rose to his giant height.
“Stay close,” he said.
My heart skipped a beat. He didn’t have to worry, I didn’t have the strength to pull my dragon from his scent and heat … even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.
We trekked for a long time, the daylight never waning, and since there was no way to tell time, we could only guess at how long we’d been in Faerie. We didn’t touch each other; it felt unnatural and I knew it couldn’t last much longer. I needed to decide what I wanted, because something told me we were already past the point of no return, that our relationship would never be the same no matter what I chose.
A branch smacked me in the face, distracting me from my endless thoughts. Shit, I am so sick of this forest. I was about five minutes from throwing a tantrum that would make any two year old proud, when finally something changed.
Braxton sensed it first, but I wasn’t far behind. The random noises were different. We were now being followed, in a stalking-our-ass kind of way.
Braxton reached out and captured my hand. “Move,” he said, his voice a snap of emotion.
It was the first touch since the whole almost-tearing-his-clothes-from-his-body incident, and it felt right to be in contact again. It wasn’t natural for us to hold back.
We were flying along now. Braxton was a speed demon when he hauled ass. His bulk cut through the greenery, making the journey far more comfortable for me. On the other hand, he was covered in many nasty-looking cuts and bruises. I was thankful he was a fast healer; within an hour most of the damage would be gone.
But that only worked if you stopped getting damaged.
Trees crashed to our right, far closer than before. And as I caught sight of what chased us, it gave me a moment’s pause. Sweet baby ogres. Faerie was now actively trying to kill us. The creatures were as large as a grizzly bear, but with the dexterity of a monkey as they swung through the closely-knit tree line. The worst was the humanoid face peeking out from the masses of thick black fur coating its head.
Braxton and I were at a disadvantage in this terrain, unable to shift to our large animals, and we couldn’t use the trees the way this massive bear-monkey was.
“What do you want to do?” I spoke around my clenched jaw.
Braxton’s grip tightened on my hand. “We’re almost free of this forest. They’re coming in from all sides, but I think we’ll make it out before they reach us.”
All sides … that was freaking great.
I was not stopping, that was for sure. Thank the gods it would be pretty rare for a supernatural to do the whole “trip over a fallen log” cliché of just about every horror and action movie. Even though we were moving at super-speeds, for our senses it was slow enough that we wouldn’t miss anything in our trail. Plus, Braxton was nailing the whole bulldozing-all-obstacles in our path thing.
I still couldn’t see a break in the tree line to indicate we were almost out of this greenery. I was just wondering if Braxton was mistaken, when we suddenly burst free from the jungle.
Weird. Major weirdness.
Normally a forest started to thin before reaching the end, but this had just cut off. The outer tree line was just as dense as the rest of the jungle had been. In front of us I could see a long expanse of thick-grained sand, a dark watermelon color. The briny quality Braxton had been scenting was very strong now, and I could hear the crashing of water in the distance. We were still moving, the warmth of the shifting sand soothing on my ravaged feet. I wished I had time to truly admire the beauty. This world thrummed with magic, the colors unparalleled with anything I’d seen on Earth, serene and beautiful, but it had a sense of being off, and it was hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem was.
The bear-monkey-people things burst from the forest. I didn’t so much see as hear their massive bulk hit the ground. They didn’t sound as if they were as agile on the sand, there were many thumps and noises of collisions echoing toward us. Braxton was practically flying along the beach, his strength lifting me to keep pace.
“I’m going to shift,” he said. I could hear him clearly, despite our rapid trajectory. No wind, the land was eerily calm.
And that was why Braxton was running and not fighting, he was trying to gain enough space between us and our pursuers to shift. Normally my dragon quad never ran from a fight, it wasn’t in his nature, but his priority was protecting me. He flung me forward before grinding to a halt, covering my flank. I just barely stayed on my feet, and spun away from the water line, turning to find Braxton had shed his jeans and was about to shift into his dragon.