Page 17 of Fated to the Grumpy Dragon
“It’s not my blood.”
She grimaced unhappily. “Fine. Let’s go.”
I bent my legs and leaped easily to the dock, where I turned around and crouched, extending an arm to Emma.
She started to reach for it, but her left arm stopped shy of parallel with the deck. “I don’t think I can grab it,” she said.
“Hey, you! Get off my boat!”
I looked over my shoulder at the approaching dragon. “That’s what we’re doing,” I said, then focused my attention back on Emma. “Just give me your right hand. I can lift you up. Come on.”
Emma hesitated, glancing around, likely looking for a ladder or another way up.
“I’ve got you,” I said. “Trust me.”
Her head snapped back around to focus on me. The same words I’d said before, which she’d ignored. I tried to push the trust through the bond our scales had forged between us—and wouldn’tthatbe fun to navigate—in the hopes she would hurry up.
“Okay. I’m going to trust you.”
She stepped up onto the gunwale and gave me her right hand at the same time. I snagged it before she could continue forward into the water and casually hauled her up out of the boat.
Too casually.
Her tiny frame came rocketing up, and I stumbled backward, thrown off-balance. Grunting, I wrapped my other hand around her waist, hauling her in to keep her from falling to the docks.
The instant her body pressed against mine, my dragon once again lost its shit. Heat burned across my skin, warming the both of us in nanoseconds, leaving nothing but warm tingles everywhere.
Apparently, my dragon didn’t care that we were both covered in blood. It wanted more, and that was that.
I, on the other hand, was in charge.
“Sorry,” I said, setting Emma down, albeit somewhat reluctantly.
“I-it’s okay,” she said.
I flinched at the husky sound of her words. Had she felt it, too? That connection, that charge, when we touched? Or was it—
“What the fuck you doing to my boat?” A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.
“Remove your hand,” I snarled, leaning forward into the owner’s face. “Before I remove it for you.”
“Oh, a tough guy, are you?”
“Just pissed off.” I bared my teeth.
“You broke my harpoon! And your woman bled all over my boat, you clumsy oaf!”
“She is not an oaf!”
“I am not ‘his woman’!”
The combined vehemence of our denials rocked the owner back a step.
“You will repay me for the harpoon,” he spat.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”
“And you will scrub my boat clean, or I’ll—”
