Page 28 of Fire in Stone

“Elex…” I gripped his shoulders.

Wind ruffled his overgrown, wavy hair, as if he were standing on top of a tall building or at the bow of a ship in the ocean.

“Where are we?” I glanced around.

The wisps of white fog rushed down past us. The ground… There was no ground under my feet. The train station rapidly grew smaller below us, sinking into the black smoke and white clouds.

We were high in the air with nothing but Elex’s arms supporting me.

“Guh!” I flexed my arms around his neck, climbing up his body. “Hold me!”

Hooking my legs around his middle, I strained my muscles, holding on to him for dear life.

“This isn’t sexual,” he explained calmly before splaying his large hand under my backside. “I’m notmolestingyou. But I need to touch you in order to hold you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, do you think I care?” I slapped my hand over his, pressing it harder against my ass. “Touch me anywhere you want, just don’t drop me.”

There’d be no surviving a fall from this height.

He chuckled into my hair. “I’ve got you, Amber. You’re safe.”

“Safe?” It didn’t feel like it. With no harness, no rope, no seat belt… nothing held me but his two arms and my own limbs that I clamped around him, attaching myself to him like a monkey to a tree. “Please, please, don’t let me fall.”

“I won’t. Trust me.”

That was the hardest part—to trust. I felt helpless, with the ground literally having been knocked from under my feet. Relying on someone so completely was unnatural and unnerving.

“Where am I to fly?” he asked.

“What?” Too disoriented to even fully comprehend his question, I had no answer to give him.

“Just tell me the general direction for now. Where is the creek with the portal? East? West? North from here?”

“Oh… The creek. Right.” He was talking about the Indian Springs Park in Georgia. “West. It’s west.”

The direction of our movement shifted from straight upwards to slightly forward and horizontal to the ground.

“You’re not planning to fly all the way to Georgia from here, are you?” I hid my face in his shoulder and closed my eyes. The insane height he’d taken me to appeared a little less intimidating if I didn’t see the clouds below us.

“Why not?” he replied casually.

“Because it’s across the ocean, a few thousand miles from here, almost halfway around the world. No one can fly that far unless you’re a machine, powered by engines with fuel and stuff.”

“How about a dragon powered by magic?” Amusement sounded in his voice.

I refused to look up or even open my eyes, clinging to him with all my limbs, my face pressed to the warm skin on his shoulder.

“It’s just too far.”

“Distance doesn’t matter.”

“How so? Besides…” I heaved a breath, shifting my arms a little as my muscles cramped from tension. “You’ve just created a massacre down there.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Ha!” I barked out a nervous laugh. “My fear is the least of your concerns. There will be much bigger consequences.”

“Your fear is the only consequence that’s important to me.” He said it as a matter of fact, which was worse somehow. I couldn’t dismiss it as flirting. He really cared about how I felt, and I couldn’t deal with that right now. I tried to ignore it, focusing on what had just happened down at the train station.

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