Page 17 of Forked Tongues Are Fun
I hightailed it around him just as another car crested the hill behind me. Its headlights seemed to spotlight everything wrong with this picture—me in my underwear, dude on the side of the road most definitely not taking a nap. Shit. If it was a cop...
Panic squeezed my lungs together. I slowed and then backed up again, sorting possible excuses like I did to the bill companies who would not leave me alone month after month.
I seemed to have lost my clothes, Officer, and he’s trying to help me find them among the stars with his psychic abilities.
We’re doing this as a dare, Officer.
If you’d been together as long as we have, Officer, you’d understand our weird sex games.
Yep, I was shit for believable excuses. The bill companies knew that firsthand since I really had to get creative with them.
The car drew closer. I leaned through the open passenger window of the coma dude’s car to get my backpack, my crotch rubbing oh-so-nicely against the metal frame. Already, the dragon fire heat was starting up again, a distraction I was seriously running out of time for. After snatching my bag, I ducked low next to the car to at least put my shirt back on, my ears burning to catch every sound the oncoming car made.
It wasn’t even slowing. Either the driver wasn’t really looking or men lying on the side of the road was completely normal, both of which were alarming. As soon as the car passed, I shot to the driver side, fumbled with the keys—and stopped.
The bluish green numbers on the dash clock blurred behind a crush of tears. One hour fifty two minutes until midnight, and it was at least two hours to Evenza.
No. No no no. I floored the gas pedal, making the tires kick up a wall of dust around me. Just no. I wouldn’t admit defeat until I was really defeated. Still, frustrated tears burned my cheeks and dripped down over my breaking heart. Next month was Asa’s birthday, my favorite day out of the entire year because we made up stories, painted rocks, and did whatever he wanted while I tried my best to spoil him. His crisp fall smell and his bubbly laugh were everything.
Hewas everything.
Between glances at the clock and not bothering to slow in the tiny towns I passed through, I focused on my urgency, both with time and speed and the growing, painful need between my legs. Since I still didn’t have my jeans on, I took care of that while I drove, my cries of release filling the empty cab.But it wasn’t enough to sate me for long. The dragon fire would consume me from the inside out if I didn’t find Vance and the other two shifters, and soon. Already, I found myself fading, like my body and mind were preparing for my death.
Finally, Evenza’s lit-up skyscape stretched up in the distance toward the rising moon.
Thirty-five minutes to spare. Now I just had to find Bad Mama January.
I found her via her text that said she was down the road from the Vivix building, a tall monstrosity in the heart of the city, parked in her insane van. A realistically painted man in a boat decorated the side of it, caught in mid-throw as he flung an anchor past the name of her company, Bullship Boats, toward the tail lights. Not very inconspicuous for one of the leaders of the underground resistance to dragon shifters, but hey. It worked.
Squealing to a stop next to her, I zipped up my jeans and double-parked on the crowded street to a chorus of honks and shouts calling for my speedy and painful death. It was already happening though.
Drenched with sweat, gasping for breath, I slid in next to her in the passenger seat, taking in a lungful of patchouli incense that puffed out from inside the air vents.
And Bad Mama herself, it seemed. Curls of cigarette smoke floated around her, giving her bohemian skirt and floral top dizzying movement. Or maybe that was just me since looking at everything made me dizzy. Her long, silvery white hair stuck out of her head like wires. A big woman, she was maybe in her thirties with kind brown eyes that crinkled in the corners, and confined to a wheelchair which she sat in now behind the wheel.
“Child’s alive, Booklet, what happened? You look like death.” She dumped a plastic bag in my lap and pointed her lit cigarette to the back of the van where the windows were shaded. “Head on back and change.”
I did, nearly face-planting twice on the way there. “Thanks, Bad Mama.”
”Don’t thank me yet. I figure you have about thirty minutes left. I’ve seen a few folks who look like dragon shifters head into that big building, all decked out in their finest, but not a whole slew of them to make me suspect that’s it. I can’t believe you found it. You’re the first person who’s ever done so, but what are you going to do when you get in there?” She turned in her seat to gaze at me and took a long drag of her cigarette. “Booklet?”
I didn’t have the strength to change and talk to her at once, not when she was going a mile a minute. The strapless, bejeweled royal blue gown she’d lent me, complete with matching heels, clung to my sweaty skin, and I instantly regretted letting something so beautiful touch me.
“There’s a man lying on the side of the road,” I said between heavy pants. As quick as I could, I taped a number of supplies to my inner thighs. “Mile marker 158 coming into Evenza. I put him a happiness coma, and he’d probably appreciate someone picking him up. Also, the dragon fire. Do you have more of it?”
“Afraid not. You used all of it?” She gestured me toward her with a hair clip in her hand.
“I accidentally spilled it.” Careful of my dress, I crawled toward her.
When she touched my temple, she jerked her hand back. “Good grief.You spilled it on yourself? Booklet, it can kill you.” Her gaze skimmed over the skin the dress bared while she arranged my hair to hide the gash on my forehead. “Where? I don’t see any burns.”
“In my...my nether regions.” It was a shameful thing to have to admit, but there it was, out in the open.
“In your what now?”
Frustration, already bubbling underneath the surface, surged. “My cooch, Bad Mama. My cooch.”
She gave a disgusted click of her tongue as she secured the clip in my hair.”That isnotwhere you’re supposed to put it.”
