I thought about the texts during my entire shift and was still thinking about them when Beck handed me my car keys and told me Lucan had dropped them off.
I found my car parked in the far corner of the parking lot, the overhead light catching the shine of it from twenty feet away.
I stopped walking.
It looked cleaner, and the tires looked different too. It took me a second to realize why. They were new.
I walked the rest of the distance and unlocked it, sliding into the driver’s seat. The interior had been cleaned too, and on the passenger seat sat a single sheet of paper.
I picked it up and unfolded it.
It was an itemized invoice. Alternator. Battery. Belts. Brakes. Brake fluid flush. Transmission flush. Coolant flush. Oil change. Four tires. Full tank of fuel. Interior and exterior detailing. The list ran almost the length of the page, and the total at the bottom was zeroed out.
I sat with the paper in my hands for a long moment. A couple of cars passed on the main road. Someone laughed somewhere behind the building.
The pressure built in my chest before my eyes went blurry.
I tipped my head back against the headrest. One tear slid down my cheek, and I let it go. Another followed, and I let that one go as well. Then I pressed my lips together and stopped it before it could become something that involved swollen eyes and snot.
There would be none of that tonight.
Because tonight I was going to fly on a dragon.
Lucan swung off the ATV as if his legs hadn’t been rattled for ten minutes on a dirt trail and helped me off. He kicked off his shoes as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in one motion.
He turned to look at me, his eyes sweeping over me. “Are you good?”
“I’m good.” My voice came out normal, which was a miracle considering my heart was doing double time.
The thought of flying on a dragon was terrifying and thrilling all at once. I’d imagined what it might be like ever since I was a little girl reading fantasy novels under my covers with a flashlight.
Now I was here, about to do something impossible. No amount of reading or dreaming could have prepared me for standing on the edge of this moment.
“Stay here while I shift. Don’t forget the backpack.” He handed me a bag. “Unless you want me to stay naked when I shift.”
I swung the bag onto my shoulder. “I wouldn’t complain about that.”
He ran a hand down his face and then reached for the button on his jeans. He held my gaze for another second, like he was giving me one last chance to change my mind. I didn’t.
“I’m going to take my pants off now.”
“Yep.” I turned my head and stared hard at a very interesting patch of bark on the nearest tree.
Fabric rustled, and then footsteps crunched through the grass. I tried not to look. I genuinely, sincerely tried. My eyes had other plans.
They tracked him as he walked into the open space, and I got a full, unobstructed view of his back. The muscles along his shoulders shifted as he moved, and lower, his waist narrowed into hips that framed an ass that was ridiculous. It was asif someone had sculpted it on purpose, specifically to ruin a woman’s ability to think.
I dragged my gaze up to his head and kept it there. Mostly.
He stopped a safe distance away and looked over his shoulder at me. A smirk was there, one that said he knew exactly where my eyes had been and was deeply, annoyingly satisfied. “Ready?”
I straightened my shoulders and gave him a thumbs-up, trying to project confidence. My skin tingled with anticipation, and part of me wanted to laugh at how absurd this was. My brain was still trying to tell me this wasn’t real.
His smirk softened into something warmer. Then he faced forward and shifted faster than last time. His skin rippled with scales for an instant, and then the transformation was complete. He was a dragon, and wings unfurled with a sound like a sail catching wind.
His eyes found me immediately, and he lowered his head until his chin nearly touched the ground. A low rumble rolled through the clearing. He lowered one wing to the ground and waited.
I stared at his wing stretching down to the grass. This was my invitation, literally laid out in front of me, and suddenly the enormity of what I was about to do crashed over me. This wasn’t a carnival ride or a theme park attraction. This was a dragon. A real dragon. And he was waiting for me to climb aboard.
