Page 66 of Ash

She was unprepared for the softness—they were scales, yes, but not cool and slimy. They were warm and smooth. On his forearm, the scales ranged from about the size of her hand along the underside to only an inch on top.

Dani forced herself to stop fondling them. He wasn’t a horse or dog. He was a Dragon that spent part of his time as a damned gorgeous human. No, she wasnotattracted to him.

She reminded herself that most men disappointed, starting with a couple of her foster fathers and ending with Remy. In her experience, the better looking they were, the harder that fall had been.

Nevertheless, at the moment he was an animal. And not just any animal—a creature that she’d always associated as magical, enough so that she’d had their likeness inked into her skin.

Surely she could ignore the human within him, just this once. Her heart accelerated. She was going to ride a freakingDragon.

Dani braced her hand on his leg and reached up to grab his offered wingtip. He used it to boost her along the shoulder to where it joined his neck.

There was more space between the spikes than she’d thought. She slid to a sitting position with a twinned protuberance at her back. The neck between her thighs was both warm and strung with muscles as hard as the stones beneath his talons.

She tried hard to think of him as a particularly warm and gorgeous pony. Something that became more difficult when the neck coiled, and his huge head turned to level one glowing eye on her. “Yous goods tos go?”

She swallowed. “I have no idea.”

A rumble from the big body. “Holds on to thes spikes ins front. If yous wants tos use your claws, gos ahead. I won’t feels it.”

Good to know. Dani concentrated and sprouted small ones from the fingers she wrapped around the spikes.

“Keep your hands inside the vehicle,” she muttered to herself.

“Ons the Dragon,” he corrected. He turned neatly on the ledge, spread his wings, and dropped into open air.

Dani issued a startled squeak at the sensation of freefall. The air whistled by them, tossing the Dragon’s long dark hair around his spiked crest. Fortunately, she’d braided her own hair after her shower, but the wind immediately teased wisps of it free to whip across her face.

For a moment, she thought she was going to lose the eggs and bacon. Her stomach heaved as she dug her claws into the spikes. But then the huge wings stilled as the fifty-foot Dragon hit a thermal and glided.

The sudden cessation of flapping—and the rolling motion it caused—enabled her to regain some composure. Dani took a deep breath, held on tight, and leaned sideways to look down past his shoulder.

The last rays of the dying sun painted the ground beneath in hues of red and orange. After a moment, she interpreted other ripples of color as rolling hills, covered in grass that waved in the wind. Fascinated, she let her eyes roam—to the dark line of forest miles away, and the mountains rising behind them.

She’d expected to be terrified. But instead, her heart, and her spirits, lifted. A few moments later, she conceded that flying on a Dragon wasawesome.

Tyrez must have sensed something from her. His head turned ever so slightly, and his huge eye gleamed at her.

“Hold on,” he advised.

She gasped as he dove, the wind whipping past her and shoving her hard against the spikes. Then he spread his wings and leveled out once more.

“Okay?” he asked.

Her heart pounded, but in exhilaration, not fear. “I’m good,” she shouted to him.

“You are smiling.” The wind tried to take the words, but he seemed to know just how much to turn his head.

Smiling? Shewassmiling. “Do it again!”

He arched his neck, folded his wings, and dove.

Dani squealed. She’d once ridden a roller coaster at the Red River Exhibition. It had nothing on this.

But the ground was rushing toward them. Dani’s claws sank into the spikes—were they going to hit?

Then the great wings opened, and the air crackled against them. Tyrez’s body leveled out only feet from the tossing grass heads. So close Dani smelled the wildflowers among them.

Someone laughed.

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