Page 37 of An Accident Waiting to Dragon

Even though he could hear the swipe of her hand coming for the side of his head before she struck, Asher didn’t duck. He’d earned that one. Chuckling under his breath, he swallowed it down the next second. He didn’t deserve to be teasing her, laughing with her. They were already in a dangerous situation, and now it was worse.

“Let’s load up on water and figure me out later.” He went to get up only to have her push him gently back down by the shoulder.

“Hold on. I may not have secret magic, but my dad and siblings aren’t wood pixies for nothing. They know plants. Stay here a sec” Gwen jumped to her feet and ran off before he could stop her.

“We shouldn’t split up,” he growled after her, unable to keep the burning need to protect her out of his voice.

Her response floated back to him. “It’s daylight. I’m fine.”

Something that could turn in a second, as they’d already learned. But before he could point that out, she popped her head around a bush. “I won’t go far,” she promised, then disappeared again.

Asher counted in his head, willing to give her five minutes at most. But when that came and went with no hint of her return, insidious worry that he had dealt with for thirteen years—every second she’d been out of his sight and out of his life—started to creep in. He was just pushing to his feet to go after her when she reappeared on the other side of the pond. She’d used the bottom of her shirt as a basket to hold what looked like several different types of plants and flowers.

Asher sank back to the rock, trying to look like he’d been bored and not edging toward frantic.

“What were you about to do?” she asked as she hopped over the stream at one end.

He cast about for a reasonable answer. “Fill the coconuts. Might as well get something done while I wait.”

“Ah. I need at least one for this anyway,” she said as she dropped to her knees in the sand by his rock and started unloading her score onto the ground, lining them up.

“What are you doing?”

“These are all plants with various healing elements—soothing, controlling inflammation, absorbing poison and so on. Ginseng, guava, turmeric, sambiloto—” She pointed to each. “I’m going to make a poultice.”

“I see.”

Not magic, but still knowledge that she’d picked up from her family. She’d always been a sponge that way.

“Worth a try,” she shrugged.

Only he didn’t miss the concerned glance she cast toward his back. She wasn’t nearly as casual as she was trying to make him believe.

After prepping them in various ways, Gwen layered her ingredients in one of the hollowed-out coconuts, adding a little water from the pond. Then using a rock, she pulverized it all together. She worked diligently, as if he wasn’t even there.

For him, pretending she didn’t exist was much harder.

Her long, black lashes spread out against her cheeks, and her tongue kept peeking out between her lips as she concentrated. Asher adjusted his position on the rock, hiding the evidence of his reaction.

Get your shit together.

He should have more self-control than this. That was for damn sure. But he’d never had good control when it came to Gwen.

“No. No control. Claim our mate,” his dragon sniped.

Asher ignored his animal side.

“Rip a strip of your shirt off to use as a bandage,” Gwen said, still not looking at him.

As distractions went, it was weak, but he’d take what he could get.

They worked in silence until he had a long strip and she stopped pulverizing the mixture. In the quiet, Gwen tilted her head this way and that as she inspected the results.

“I hope it works,” she muttered.

“Me too, love.”

The endearment slipped out, and Gwen stiffened. Then, in a low voice… “Don’t call me that, please.”

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