Page 18 of Burned

“I know the feeling.” I give him a small smile then return my attention to my phone.

I hate lying to my family, but I can’t exactly tell them the truth. And I have to tell themsomething. After a minute of staring at the message thread, I finally come up with an excuse I can live with.

LORD: Again, I haven’t eaten anyone. Listening to you lot, anyone would think I’M the Drake with control issues…

TINO: He lives! Dude, where have you been?

HEMINGWAY: You do have control issues, Lord.

I snortat Hem’s teasing and Tino’s enthusiasm, ultimately ignoring both, and type another message.

LORD: I can’t give many details, the situation is too delicate and too sensitive, but there is a human I’ve been nursing back to health. In order to resolve the situation, we’ve had to take a little trip. I’ll be away for at least a few days, maybe longer, but I didn’t want you to worry. I’m fine and I’ll be home when everything is settled.

There’san instant flurry of responses that I don’t bother to look at. I close the chat and power down my phone.

“It’s going to be about seven hours until we land. If you want to get some rest, there’s a small bedroom at the back of the plane,” I offer.

Alrick shakes his head. “I’ve been asleep for days. The last thing I want right now is any more sleep.”

I chuckle. “Fair enough.”

We fall into silence for a moment, trading awkward smiles. I hadn’t accounted for having to find a way to entertain him for seven hours. My dragon offers up a litany of creative options to do just that, but I stomp down the fresh wave of heat that rushes through me and clear my throat.

“Would you like to watch a movie?”

A look of surprise crosses his face, and after a brief pause, he nods.

“I don’t get the chance to watch movies often,” he confesses in a low voice like he’s admitting to something truly scandalous.

My lips twitch with a grin. “Neither do I,” I admit. “If I’m not busy with the security business, I’m up to my sca—” I clear mythroat again to cover my near slip. “—earsin trouble that my brothers have a knack for finding.”

He chuckles like he can relate, then settles more comfortably into his seat while I grab the remote so we can find something to watch. It’s not the way my dragon was just drooling to pass the time, but he purrs with contentment inside me anyway.

ALRICK

An hourinto the movie and Lord is fast asleep, slumped over in his seat with his head resting on my shoulder. He lets out soft snores, each exhale accompanied by a hazy cloud of smoke from his parted lips. I’m staring ahead at the TV screen embedded in the back of the seat in front of me, but I’m not really paying attention to the action happening on the screen. I’m too busy puzzling over all the confusing contradictions between what I’ve been taught about dragons and what I’ve seen of Lord so far.

He’s supposed to be vicious and bloodthirsty. He’s supposed to be hell-bent on destruction and an uncontrollable threat to humanity. He’snotsupposed to whimper and twitch in his sleep like a puppy.

The worst part is, I’ve been telling myself to jerk my shoulder and wake him up for at least twenty minutes, but for some impossible-to-understand reason, I don’t want to. No, what I want is to card my fingers through his hair to find out how soft it is.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

It has to be whatever magic he fed me, right? I rub my forehead, careful not to jostle the sleeping dragon, and huff a laugh at myself. If Digby were here, he would put a blade through Lord’s throat now while he slumbers. I might not have my sword, but even a dragon can’t live without its head, andI’m sure there’ssomethingthat could be used as a weapon. It wouldn’t matter to my brother that killing the dragon might mean having to fight off the staff on the plane, that I might even die doing so. It would be an honorable death, the kind of death I was destined for the moment I was born a Havaror, youngest son in a centuries-long line of dragon hunters.

My throat tightens and bile rises in my gut at the thought of it though. Lord has been nothing but kind to me so far. He saved my life. Maybe this is all a trick somehow, but I’m finding it harder and harder to mistrust him by the second.

This is dangerous. The whole situation is bound to end in disaster.

I risk another glance at the sleeping dragon, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers twitch and curl as he dreams, and the unmistakable swell of arousal that his expensive trousers do nothing to hide. Heat churns in my gut and my cock twitches with interest.

I swallow hard and close my eyes, forcing myself to stop looking at him. We need to cancel out this magic as soon as possible, and then I need to get far,faraway from this dragon.

Keeping my eyes closed, I focus my attention on listening to the movie rather than Lord’s breathing, and slowly I feel myself relaxing into sleep as well.

A violent lurch jolts me awake some time later. I blink and rub my eyes, finding Lord no longer using my shoulder as a pillow.

“Not to worry, it’s just the landing gear,” he assures me, patting my hand. His skin is scorching hot against mine, and I finally have the answer to one of the questions that plagued me yesterday—he feels soft and smooth just like a human.

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