Emma (Dark Fire) (12 page)

She rubbed her wrist, not understanding why her body produced the heat of a pre-mark when Tyler’s didn’t. Why in the world would she, and her uncle, progress faster in the mate pairing than the two immortals? It seemed backward.

She snorted to herself. What did she know about anything? She was having a hard enough time being acquainted with two sets of emotions and the infrequent word or two that popped into her head.

Clenching her hand, she realized her palm was warmer than before while her wrist was cooler to the touch. Sliding her fingers up her arm, she gasped in surprise, from elbow to shoulder her skin burned with a deep warm blaze.

His voice sounded inside her head.
“I’ve got to get Emma in the air with me.”
A full sentence spoken, the words clear as a bell. As if he stood behind her and whispered in her ear, the words gave the same impact. Shivers ran up her spine.

Watching him didn’t provide any answers. Talking with two enforcers, he appeared stone-faced, lacking any emotion.

He was a puzzle. The moment she heard his voice in her head, a thread of desperation fill her. His emotion echoed within the empty area inside her. Why would he be desperate to get her in the air?

If she was going to fly, she wanted to be safely inside an airplane. Riding on a dragon’s back, wasn’t her idea of fun. She didn’t want to be completely dependent on someone who might become angry enough to chomp her in half. Human or not, both dragons had revealed they could lose the human thinking side of themselves. Yeah, she did not want to be flying several hundred feet above the ground when a dragon went ballistic. Talk about disaster.

She froze, unable to move. Could that be why he wanted her in the air? Was he thinking about
accidentally
dropping her? Emma shivered over her morbid thoughts, and wondered if the cold prickle running up her backbone was a subconscious warning.

Lydia changed to full dragon and knelt next to Keith.

With growing unease, Emma watched her uncle slowly climb onto Lydia’s back. The dragon seemed to be watching his progress even closer than Emma was. Her long neck twisted backward and she inched her muzzle closer to him.

Emma heard Lydia’s rough exhale from across the graveled driveway. The dragon snuffled against his pants leg, urging him a bit closer to the base of her neck.

Keith chuckled and inched forward, rubbing his hand across her scaled snout.

The crunch of gravel announced Tyler’s arrival. “Ready to go flying?” he asked, a slight frown creased his forehead.

“Sure,” she said calmly, while mentally screeching,
NO WAY
!

“How will I stay on?” Emma asked, trying to keep her voice steady. Her heart raced with fear. Rubbing her hand down the side of her jeans, her face turned slightly green at the thought of being that high in the air without any kind of safety harness on.

“There’s a bit of a dip where my neck connects to my back. Most people feel safest there.”

“Oh,” she said, motioning to Lydia, “so that’s why she moved my uncle closer to her neck.”

“Yeah.” He pulled a strand of shiny black and clear cut-beads from his pocket and handed them to her. “Here, put these in your hair,” Tyler said gruffly.

Emma blinked in surprise, feeling her face flush with pleasure she stuttered, “Thanks.”

No guy had ever given her anything. From his frowning face, he wasn’t too pleased with himself. The gift of beads must be a type of tradition. She noticed Lydia had given Keith a strand. She’d laughed at the time. Her uncle wasn’t the jewelry type.

Most cultures had a ton of traditions. The dragon race might have hundreds of customs. Any single one of them ready to trip her up.

From his tense shoulders, Tyler must’ve been forced into giving the jewelry to her. She slipped the beads through her fingers, wondering what the consequences would be if she accepted or not.

He issued a slight growl and his face darkened into a scowl.

Gee, what a surprise, she thought sarcastically. He was already regretting giving them to her. Whatever it was, she still wasn’t sure.

The strand wasn’t simple. Looking closer, her eyes got bigger. The black beads were actually faceted gems in the shape of teardrops. Each teardrop hung between an intricately woven section of small clear gems, sparkling brilliantly in the sunshine.

She sucked in a sharp breath. She didn’t know gems, but they looked like diamonds to her, and she knew the dragons didn’t have the technology to make simulated diamonds. No wonder he acted ticked-off. That strand of gems must have cost a fortune.

“This looks awful expensive,” she said. Shaking her head, she refused the jewelry, handing it back to him. “I can’t accept that kind of gift.”

“It wasn’t that kind of gift. Let me have it,” he huffed, plucking the strand out of her hands. “They go on your right side.”

Wishing she could crawl under a rock, her face burned with colorful embarrassment. When a boy handed a girl jewelry, it normally reflected a gift given. It had been an easy mistake to make.

She shivered as his fingers lightly brushed the side of her face. He slipped one end of the beaded strand into her hair, next to her temple, and said, “Attach here.” Pulling the loose end backward, behind her ear, nearly to the back of her head, he repeated the process.

Fingering the beads, she wondered how he managed to make them stay in her hair. She hadn’t felt him tie the strand in her hair. She was lucky to get any kind of clip to stay in her straight, silky mop. She wasn’t going to be responsible for losing a high dollar piece of jewelry that wasn’t even hers.

She gently tugged on the strand, but they stayed firmly anchored. “Okay, fine, if they weren’t a gift, then why’d you stick them in my hair? And how…,” tugging harder, “crap, ouch! How do I get them out?”

“Didn’t you hear me tell them to attach?” he grumbled, glaring at her as she continued tugging on the strand. “If you keep that up, you’re going to break them or yank a hunk of hair out. They won’t come out until you give the order.”

“Since they aren’t mine, I don’t want a fortune in gems stuck to my head,” she said, glaring back at him. She stopped pulling on the delicate gems. “So take them out. Now.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t yours,” he grumbled. “I had the two-way strand made for you.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “You said it wasn’t a gift, now you’re saying you had a strand of gems made for me? Would you make up your mind,” she huffed.

“It’s a tool, nothing more. A faerie created the strand, weaving a thread of dorcha energy through it. The two-way lets you speak to me while I’m in dragon form. To turn it on and off, simply touch one of the beads and say two-way on or two-way off,” he said in a clipped tone, before striding away from her. He stopped a dozen feet away and shifted into dragon.

Emma clenched her hands and tried to get her temper under control. He could be such an arrogant jerk. It would be nice, if he remembered, she didn’t have a clue about their mystical mumbo-jumbo.

Touching a cool gemstone, she said, “Two-way on.”

Even if the jewelry was a tool, he still had it made for her. He might not want to admit it, but that proved he had planned to see her again. Why else have something made specifically for her? The thought appeased her blooming temper and she tried to stop scowling.

She had snapped and snarled all day. He probably thought she was a shrew.

Lowering his large body to the ground, he stretched his forearm outward.
“Come on Emma, everyone’s ready. Just think of my forearm as a ladder,”
Tyler said, mentally speaking in her head.

“I can hear you!” she yelped, jumping backward.

Lowering his head, until he was near enough for her to touch, he said,
“That’s the whole point of the two-way,”
he sighed and a gush of warmly scented air feathered through her hair.
“Otherwise, we’d never be able to hear our riders in the air. Just talk normally while on my back or up to a league away and I’ll be able to hear you. Now come on, everyone is waiting for us.”

“We measure distance by the mile, not the league. I don’t even know how far that is,” she grumbled, glowering at him, taking in the height of his back. Even crouched on the ground, his back had to be twelve or fifteen feet high.

The jewels had distracted her from the upcoming ride, now her fear came rushing back to her.

His back looked slippery, not safe at all. She liked to think of herself as adventurous, but she didn’t have a death wish. Maybe she should walk. Army or no army, meeting a gun-toting soldier would be preferable to falling to her death.

“I always carry my clan sibs anytime we go anywhere. I haven’t dropped any of them yet,”
he said jokingly.
“Jenna loves riding dragon back.”

At the mention of the girl, jealousy streaked through her.

“Yeah, but she is Tuathan. She would just bounce or something,” she grumbled, glaring at Tyler’s back, she wished there was some way out of the current mess. She didn’t want to be in the air. More importantly, she didn’t want that close to Tyler. The thought of wrapping her legs around his neck had her heart racing and not in fear.

Tyler snorted, slightly pawing the ground.
“Emma, I know you’re afraid. I won’t let you fall.”

Shocked, she jerked her eyes up to his. “You said you couldn’t feel my emotions,” she said between clenched teeth. Darn it, she’d been trying so hard to act as if she didn’t care one way or the other. Had he felt her desire for him? Did he know how much she wanted him to like her?

Crap, why did she have to admit she wanted him right then? Now, he knew. The thought of his pity made her feel sick, especially when she knew he didn’t feel the same way.

Maybe, she should leave. The jeep had a nearly full tank of gas. That would be plenty to reach Tulsa. She didn’t want to spend the summer at her mom’s new house, but it was preferable than acting like an idiot over someone who didn’t want her.

She watched his face, seeing his eyes narrow in frustration. It was amazing, but for a dragon, he had a very expressive face.
“Emma, I can smell your fear.”
His growl emphasized his mental words.

“Oh, okay, sure,” she said uneasily, releasing a huge sigh of relief. It was definitely time to get a grip on her rampaging emotions. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

She tried smiling, but knew it came out as a grimace. Giving up, she took a calm breath and walked up Tyler’s arm like a ramp. Near the top, she looked down at the ground, and teetered. Her foot slipped and she fell. Her hands flew outward, one grabbing the side of his neck, the other scrabbling uselessly across his slick shoulder. A split-second of fear shot through her, taking her breath away.

Tyler’s long tail snaked around her waist and steadied her, keeping her from falling. At nearly the same instant, his diamond shaped head whipped around and she came eye to eye with him. He tilted his head, and long black horns glinted in the evening sun. He seemed to be asking if she was okay. That’s how Emma took it anyway. She didn’t want to think about the super sharp teeth he had hidden behind his snout.

She couldn’t feel his current emotions, but seconds earlier, the instant her heated flesh touched his scales, she felt a flash of his shock and then nothing. Lydia hadn’t said anything about feeling his emotions when she touched him. Wasn’t that just great?

Grimacing in embarrassment, she muttered, “Thanks, I’m not exactly graceful at the best of times.”

He nodded his head in apparent understanding and her face flushed a deeper red. If she hadn’t felt his shock at her clumsiness, she would’ve thought he wanted to be nice. Resignation settled in the pit of her stomach. Having two left feet was simply one more black mark against her. She couldn’t win for losing.

Emma avoided Tyler’s gaze and sank onto his back, rubbing her hands across his scales. They were warm, like the scales on his muzzle, but they felt like slick pieces of steel. If she started sliding, she wouldn’t stand a chance of holding on.

Her mind yelled at her to get off while she still had the chance. Getting caught up in a real life sci-fi thriller was not her idea of a fun filled summer.

Twenty minutes later, they were flying over the forest, varying shades of blue and green trees covered the mountains. From her position, on Tyler’s back, she could see for miles in every direction. In the distance, she caught the glint of water.

She chuckled, so much for her fear of flying. It was fantastic. Dragons would make a fortune just giving rides to people.

Excitement rushed through her. She didn’t want the trip to end. She wanted to explore. She had always loved going places and doing new things, but riding a dragon, seeing the world from the sky was beyond amazing.

There was an entire new world with thousands of new things to see. She couldn’t wait to begin discovering all the new stuff.

More and more dragons flew across the sky. Many of them had sword-carrying warriors perched on their back. Soon, dozens of furies and gryphon joined the mix of enforcers on obvious guard duty.

Curious about Capital City, she leaned farther over Tyler’s shoulder. Houses, buildings of every shape and size, rose for as far as she could see. Built with stone, the primary color was bluish-gray, but she could see rose and brown shades as well. Nearly all of the buildings were two or three stories high, built to take advantage of the steep mountains surrounding the lake. A few buildings soared as high as ten stories with towers jutting much higher into the evening sky. One building looked distinctly like a huge church, stained glass and everything.

The town reminded her of what old Europe must have looked like.

Well, except for the odd colors and the architecture. The more she thought about it, she realized the town was like crossing old England with a Spanish hacienda. The Tuathans seemed to love archways. Flowers and vines grew from every balcony. Combined with wide-open courtyards, built in the center of many homes, the houses looked welcoming.

The sprawling town gave way to large mansions with lawns of blue grass and multi-colored trees.