SavedDragon (2 page)

“Good.” He smiled up at her from where he knelt at her feet. The smug pleasure on his handsome countenance made her want to both wring his neck and kiss him. She didn’t know which seemed the most pleasing.

Kissing him would be a better use of time,
she internally decided. Chloe quietly sighed. She let her head roll back and closed her eyes. “You have great hands. I haven’t had a foot massage this great in years.” The little Asian ladies in the salon never treated her that well during her pedicures, and she paid money for those!

“You should strip.”

“Excuse me?” It wasn’t everyday a man rivaling the God of Thunder wanted to get her out of her clothes.

“Would you not prefer warm attire to your drenched garments?”

“Oh!” Her cheeks suffused with heat and color, spreading down her throat toward her collarbones.

“I possess many articles of clothing which may provide sufficient alternative. Unless of course, you prefer to catch cold and perish of exposure.”

He talks so strangely,
she thought.
What an odd man. An odd, sexy man… Christ, maybe I did hit my head on the rocks and this is all some freaky fantasy.

“No. I’d prefer not to perish of exposure. Thank you very much.”

Saul left her side and returned with a pile of clothing. T-shirts, khaki-colored shorts, and a pair of cargo pants. All too big for her. She accepted a tee and a blanket gratefully.

Chloe began pulling off her shirt when she became aware of Saul’s gaze on her. “Um… do you mind?”

“Mind?” He gave her a baffled look.

“Can you turn your back at least?”

Saul sighed as if the inconvenience pained him. “Your modesty is almost endearing, but as you wish. I will utilize this time to retrieve your belongings.”

Once his broad shoulders and fine body disappeared from view into the dark crevice in the wall, Chloe stripped away her top and tossed it aside. The wet cotton fell with a plop against the dark stone floor.

“Ugh. He’s right about one thing. Feels good to get all of this off.” While Chloe had a change of shirt, panties, and a pair of walking shorts in her bag, she hadn’t come prepared with much else. She shimmied out of her clammy sports bra and tugged on the dry t-shirt loaned to her. Then tugged the blanket up over her legs and around her hips to conceal her damp boyshorts.

Saul announced his return to the cavern by loudly clearing his throat. She glanced up to spy her handsome rescuer lurking at the fissure in the wall, clutching her bag in hand, and smiling almost shy.

“Am I permitted to return?”

“You may,” she called toward him.

The hot Viking lookalike deposited her backpack beside her.

Unfortunately, enough water had entered through the flap during her moment in the storm that the tightly rolled bundles of clothing packed into the bottom of the bag were damp on top. She fished out the dry panties beneath her wet walking shorts and didn’t fret over the lack of a bra, too small-breasted to feel uncomfortable wearing the man’s t-shirt alone.

Her asshole boyfriend Freddy had offered to buy her tits once, promising that if she agreed to it, he’d cover the full cost of implants to bump her modest A-cups into a considerable C-cup. Chloe had declined it. She liked her shape, even if he didn’t.

“Thank you, Saul, for getting that,” she graciously said to him when he rejoined her on the rough stone.

“I did nothing worthy of your gratitude.”

The smile began to slip from her face, but it clung precariously and lingered with renewed uncertainty. He was an odd man. Strange, but so very otherworldly and polite. His unrecognizable accent sent chills down her spine.

“Where are you from?” she suddenly asked, eager to learn more about the man in her company. Her strange savior blinked at her in surprise, as if he’d expected anything but her curiosity.

“From a land distant to this place.”

“Europe?” she questioned again.

Saul shook his head. “Hardly.”

Am I prying into his business?
she wondered. Her smile faded, swept away by her rising uncertainty. Unwilling to bother him any further, she brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arm around them. The sleeping bag maintained her sense of modesty.

“Tell me about you,” Saul said.

“Me? Not much to tell. I’m a paralegal. We deal mostly with family law and property disputes,” she explained. “But I think I’m ready for a change. Lately…” The job lacked the rewarding qualities she once enjoyed. She wanted something fresh in a new city away from Freddy’s inane insecurities and Malcolm’s egotistical attitude. Chloe and her ex still crossed paths since they worked in the same building.

Recently, rumors had traveled down the office grapevine about Malcolm’s new wife dumping him and finding a loophole in their supposed ironclad prenuptial agreement. She took him to the bank, and now he was on the prowl for a replacement. She confirmed it as truth when she caught Malcolm slinking around her office floor.

If the distance of a few hundred miles separated them, maybe she wouldn’t feel compelled to take either loser back the next time one of them slunk into her life. She credited her best friend Marcy’s support for helping her through the last rough breakup. If not for her BFF reminding her of Freddy’s short fuse, she might have caved and allowed him in on her trip.

Saul was as intuitive as he was attractive. “You are unsatisfied with your work. The clientele, perhaps?”

“Sometimes. We see a lot of families come in to split up… with kids caught in the middle. Sometimes people use them like currency to hurt the other partner in the relationship. Ten years of watching people fight over things they could work out in marital counseling, and now I’m just plain tired.”

“A union no longer carries the weight it once held,” he agreed.

“Are you married?” she asked.

Saul shook his head. “I remain untethered.”

“A happy bachelor then?” Chloe asked lightly, putting a smile on her face.

Her scruffy companion shook his head again. “It is not for lack of interest to find a better half or my failure to conduct a thorough search. She simply does not exist.”

“Oh…”
Crap, change of subject, change of subject!
she thought. She admonished herself mentally for prying into the man’s personal affairs, and then quickly leapt into something safely impersonal. “Do you live or work nearby, Saul?”

He shook his head again. “I work in Drakenstone Studios. Certainly not close by any means. I flew in to enjoy a fortnight away from the city’s filth.”

The name struck a chord in her memory. A few recent blockbuster film titles flitted through her mind, the sort with lots of action and amazing effects.

“You’re not an actor though, right? I’d have seen you in something.”

Saul flashed her a toothy grin. “No. I do not act.”

Pity…
He had the looks for it but the idea of women across the world ogling him made Chloe irritable. The out-of-the-blue surge of jealousy unsettled her.

As if sensing her discomfort, Saul leapt up to his feet and offered both hands out to her. He had agile moves, like a martial artist or gymnast. “Why have you remained stationary?” he questioned. “Come. You may resume your interrogation shortly. Put your ankle to the test.”

“I dunno…”

“What concerns you, Chloe?”

“Let’s just say that I don’t quite trust a massage to have me up on my feet yet.”

“You should make the attempt,” he encouraged her.

“I’m wearing nothing beneath this sleeping bag but a t-shirt and panties, Saul. Are my pants dry?”

He sighed in exasperation. “No. Would you sunbathe in anything more while on a beach?”

“Well no, not really.” In fact, her most recent swimsuit purchase consisted of two tiny triangles over the ass and crotch with patterns of bare skin over her hips. At least her hipsters provided full coverage.

“Then come.”

With great patience, he took her by the hand and assisted her onto her feet. At first, she felt a vague twinge of fleeting discomfort, but once Chloe set her full weight on it, all became well again. The man had magic hands, or she’d really done less damage than she previously estimated. After rolling the ankle joint, she took a few experimental steps.

“Wow! It really does feel better. But now I’m starved.” By the time she had walked to her bag, her ankle caused her no further discomfort at all. It was a miracle, as if he’d laid hands on her and cast all of her pains away. “Wanna share some dinner?”

A big guy like him had to be starving. He was easily six inches taller than her and built like an Olympic athlete. He probably required as much food in one meal as she consumed in an entire day to feed those muscles.

“You would share your meal with me?”

“Well I did offer, silly. Do you want any or not?”

He nodded at her and settled on the ground again, where he waited until she gathered rainwater for the MREs. Once they were heated, she shook up the pouch and offered him two with a plastic spoon.

“You’re going to want salt and pepper with that,” she cautioned him.

He ignored her warning and spooned up a mouthful of soggy vegetables in beef-flavored broth. Within a matter of seconds, his inquisitive expression began to change. His mouth turned down, and he swallowed the first bite like she’d fed him pulped paper.

“This is horrendous,” Saul commented, spooning through the contents of the pouch as if he expected the mirage to fade and reveal a replacement meal in its place. “How could you honestly claim that this passes for sustenance? What is this foul thing?”

“Meals Ready-to-Eat beef stew,” Chloe replied.

“I neither see nor taste a crumb of beef in this ill-prepared morsel of cuisine.”

“It’s more than you had before I came along,” Chloe shot back.

“Do you also have a preference for meat, or shall this supposed beef stew be your only meal?”

Chloe sighed wistfully. “I could go for a steak, yeah, but there isn’t an Outback tucked away in this cavern, you know?”

Saul rose to his feet and offered his unopened pouch and unfinished meal back to her. “Very well. Rest. Drink. I will return shortly with sustenance of a more… edible quality.”

The man disappeared into the narrow crevice again. Against her better judgment, Chloe tossed their unfinished pouches into the discarded plastic bag and settled down to rest on her side with her phone. The signal bars had forsaken her, but she at least had a good book to read.

The smokey-sweet aroma of roasting meat awakened Chloe from her impromptu nap. While the digital romance novel occupying her phone had been filled with spicy sex and sensual mystery, it couldn’t combat the fatigue inspired by falling into a secret tunnel and meeting her own seductive stranger.

Yawning, she propped her weight onto an elbow, and opened her eyes to find Saul crouched beside the fire. The flames crackled beneath the fragrant haunch of some animal. A deer or mountain goat maybe.

“Where did you…?” She didn’t see a lick of hunting equipment in sight. Not even a damned blowgun or quiver.

“It had broken its leg. Hardly a difficult catch when one is hobbled and incapable of defending itself.” His brows rose, confirming his intended double meaning. It was as if he knew she expected him to be some kind of cannibalistic, mountain-dwelling murderer.

Chloe’s cheeks flushed again. “Right, but how did you even get to where there was a deer? It’s pitch black and pouring outside still.”

“As I said, hardly a difficult task. Deer frequent the summit and sometimes slip down the slope.”

“Where’s the rest of it, Saul?” she persisted.
Don’t tell me he poached the leg off of that poor creature and wasted the rest.

His proud smile diminished. “Why do you ask?”

“You didn’t have to kill something just to feed me its leg.”

Chloe wasn’t a vegetarian or anything, but the callousness turned her stomach. Her father was an avid huntsman during his prime, and she had memories of him putting practically every inch of the animal’s carcass to use. He’d create art with the antlers and sew gorgeous garments with the pelts, which he gifted to his wife and child. She gained her love of the outdoors from him before her parents split.

“I eased its suffering. What remained of the unfortunate creature became a meal for some other predator, no doubt.”

“Some other predator?”

Saul scoffed. “There are larger and meaner beasts in the vicinity than this buck. Do you honestly believe it to be wasteful when another has benefitted from the kill?”

He was right, of course. Cougars were opportunistic animals who would enjoy the deceased white-tailed deer no less now that Saul had relieved it of one hind leg. It was better for the buck to be put out of its misery than to await a slow death.

Shame colored Chloe’s face and forced her to look away. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to say that. And ungrateful.”

“Apology accepted.”

The meal lacked culinary finesse but Chloe had brought salt, pepper, and enough seasoning for the MREs to give the meat some flavor. They ate together in companionable silence, which led to Chloe comparing Saul and Freddy again. Her ex always blabbered about himself, his job, his clients, and his latest electronics indulgence. He rarely cared to inquire about her days.

When Saul did speak, it was to inquire about her with genuine curiosity. Where did she come from? Had she enjoyed the mountain prior to her injury? His final unexpected question drew their conversation into awkward territory again.

“Are you promised to anyone?”

Such an old-fashioned term. Chloe chuckled and shook her head at him. “No. Not really. The guy I was seeing, well, we sort of fell out right before I came on this weekend getaway.”

“I am sorry.”

“It’s alright. He was a dick anyway.” She raised one shoulder in a half shrug and tried to pass him the rest of the haunch. He waved it off politely.

“Say, would you mind taking a picture with me?”

“To what purpose?”

“First time I’ve had a white knight come to my rescue,” she replied, grinning. “I’d like to preserve the memory. Besides, my friend Marcy won’t believe me when I tell her you look like a Disney prince.”