Page 115 of Deadwood
Bowen faced me, grabbing both my hands and giving a reassuring squeeze. “He’s only kidding.” Then, louder, “Right, Vulcan?”
“I suppose,” the beast purred. His voice, deep and full of gravel, grated over my body, sending chills prickling across my arms.
“If you truly don’t want to ride on him, I can saddle up some horses and we can be on our way. He’s the quickest means of getting there, but horseback is fine if that’s what you’d prefer.” It almost shocked me how willing he was to accommodate me if I didn’t wish to ride a fortress of a beast.
I stared at Vulcan’s shimmering wing, finding it almost hypnotizing. If Bowen said it was alright, I had no reason not to trust him with this, too. Right? Surely, he’d done this before, and so far, he’d proved that keeping me alive and unharmed was important to him. After all he’d done for me thus far, he wouldn’t put me on the back of a dragon who would drop me from the air like a flea on his back and be done with me.
Hopefully.
“No,” I said, shoving all the confidence I could muster into the word. “We can do this.”
“We?” Bowen repeated. “Princess, I’ve ridden him hundreds of times. It’s you who needs convincing.”
Refusing to lose the confidence I’d just meagerly gained, I stomped past Bowen, my boots flattening the grass as I approached Vulcan’s wing.
“Auria—” Bowen called out, but I didn’t stop.
I reached up, grabbing hold of the bony part at the tip of his wing. With a swivel of his head, he shot me an irritated glare, a rumble sounding in his throat as the bottoms of his very sharp, very horrifying teeth bared at me.
“Auria, it was a joke,” Bowen said after I hefted myself up, digging the toe of my boot into Vulcan’s scales with a white-knuckled grip on his wing.
“What?” Was he kidding me? Now I looked like an idiot. Riding a dragon?—
Bowen placed strong hands on my waist, lifting me off the wing and bringing me back to the ground. The warmth of his skin seeped through my loose, leather corset where it sat over my white blouse. Every nerve in my body focused in on his touch, but then, somewhat reluctantly and to my slight disappointment, he dropped his arms to his sides. “You climb up his leg, not his wing.”
I let out a frustrated huff of air, tossing my head back. “Gods, save me.”
“Not even a god can save you from this, burned one,” Vulcan muttered, lifting his wing in a high arc before stretching out his front leg before me and Bowen. The size alone made me have to swallow the nerves that crawled up my throat. He was massive—almost the same size as the snow dragon in the Brimstone Mountains.
“Vulcan,” Bowen reprimanded, glaring up at the beast.
Vulcan chuffed, a puff of warm vapor rising from his nostrils. “You call her by a different name as well.”
Bowen’s jaw clenched. “Not to degrade her.”
I snorted. “That’s not how I’ve taken it.”
His eyes held mine. “Maybe in the beginning, Auria, but not now.”
Like a trance, he pulled me in with words I so badly wanted to hear. Something was changing between us, and maybe it wasn’t anything big, but the subtle shift that had occurred between when we first met and now wasn’t lost on me. I only hated that whatever this was was temporary.
“Her name does not suit her,” Vulcan defended shamelessly, breaking our short stupor.
“Your attitude does not suit you,” I spit back, trying to find a place to grip onto his scales. Behind me, Bowen set his hands back on my waist, and I froze. They fit so perfectly—like they belonged in that tiny divot between my ribs and my hips.
“Careful, Princess. He can bite.” Bowen lifted me higher, helping me get my footing. Though Vulcan’s leg was outstretched, it still gave us a steep incline.
Vulcan stared out at the tops of the trees, waiting for us to get our act together. Well, I supposed just me. Bowen was apparently a pro. “Yes, and I’m feeling a bit snappy.” For emphasis, he made the closest resemblance a dragon could to a smile, bearing his yellow teeth dripping with saliva.
Bowen shook his head behind me as I breached the top of Vulcan’s shoulder, climbing onto his back. With his size, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be to stand and get my footing. Still, though, Bowen kept a hand at my waist, his touch light, to keep me from losing balance. I didn’t want to know how far of a drop it would be, even on the ground.
“Sit here,” Bowen instructed, gesturing to the center of Vulcan’s shoulders.
“We just…sit? There’s nothing to hold on to?” I asked.
Bowen must’ve seen the slight fear in my eyes because he stepped behind me, his chest brushing my back.
“You can hold on to me if you’d prefer,” he murmured in my ear, brushing his hands down my arms to grab my hands. He helped lower me to straddle the peak in Vulcan’s spine. Once I was seated, his hand slid down my outer thigh toward my knee, then back up to my hip. “You hold on here”—he trailed his hand back down to my calf where it was slightly angled toward him—“not here. He doesn’t like when you dig your heels in.”
