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“No,” I assure him. “It is.”

“Or if the dragon makes you uncomfortable—”

I can’t help it, I laugh. “He doesn’t. I mean, yeah, he’s pretty fucking scary, but I think I like him better than I like you most of the time.”

That earns me another wide, devastating grin. As he strips off his shirt, then his shorts, I don’t turn away this time.

How could I? The man is a work of art, truly.

He takes his time, putting on a show that’s just for me. When he rolls his shoulders, flexes all of those muscles and transforms into his half-shift, I can’t stop myself from stepping a little closer to reach out and touch.

“Last chance, ember,” he says, voice low and graveled as his pecs bunch beneath my fingertips. “If you’d like to bow out.”

“Not a chance,” I whisper, then step back again, every single nerve in my body tingling in anticipation of what’s coming next.

Blair does the same, moving back until there’s ten feet of distance between us, twenty, until he shifts again and I’m standing face to face with his dragon under the clear blue Idaho sky.

When the dragon approaches me, there’s something almost playful about him. Relaxed. Happy to see me as he nudges his nose against my outstretched palm and huffs a breath against my skin.

“Alright, big guy,” I say, swallowing over the sudden, inexplicable tightness in my throat. “Just like last time, you’re not going to kill me, right?”

His amused huff of breath is my only answer, but I suppose that will have to do.

The dragon is surprisingly helpful and patient as I awkwardly get the saddle on him, even rolling over and showing me his golden belly so I can get the straps secured around him.

When I’ve done as good a job as I’m going to with getting everything tightened and buckled, I go to the Jeep to get the goggles and helmet Blair brought for me. Putting them on, I walk back to the dragon with my heart hammering in my throat.

He watches me the whole time, golden eyes blazing. When I reach his side he dips down low—almost a bow—giving me plenty of room to climb up into the saddle.

“Don’t make me regret this, alright?” I ask in a shaky voice as I get settled and tighten the helpful straps Blair included in the design across my thighs. “Blair seemed to think this was a good idea, so I really hope you don’t prove him wrong about that.”

The dragon gives his head a shake and lets out a short, chortling roar. With a few running steps and a mighty beat of his wings, he launches us both from the ground.

I let out a startled yelp against the sudden sensation of being airborne, clutch tighter to the saddle, and lean down low over the dragon’s back. But he’s not letting me go anywhere. His wings stretch wide and his body levels out as he stops climbing, and even though I’m shaking like a damn leaf and still scared half out of my mind, I make myself sit up in the saddle and look around.

It’s… incredible.

A dream.

With the wind streaming past me and a bubble of near-hysterical, awed laughter threatening to break from my chest, none of it seems real.

Rugged mountains stretch out in the distance, and rolling plains pass in a blur as we fly fast and far, over rivers and roads and little farmsteads spotted across the land.

Every beat of his wings echoes through me, and when I pull one shaky hand from the saddle to lay it against his scaled neck, I swear I can feel the magick of him beneath my fingertips. Warm, fierce, free. It’s a lick of flame that burns through me, all the way from where I’m touching him to the center of my chest.

The world spreads out from horizon to horizon beneath us. From way up here, on the back of this dragon, it feels like anything might be possible. Absolutely anything.

In some distant corner of my soul, the last brick falls.

Everything that wall has been holding back comes rushing in hard and fast and unbearably, exquisitely painful. Everything I’ve tried not to feel for him, every bit of longing and joy and desire I’d almost managed to convince myself I could survive without. It all washes over me in a cascade, taking the rest of my doubts and defenses with it.

Barely able to withstand it, I lay myself down over the dragon’s back, pressing my cheek into the side of his scaled neck as we soar.

The flight lasts a little longer—short, but the first of what I have no doubt will be many—and he circles lazily back to where we started, coming down for a graceful landing in the grassland.

Tears stream down my cheeks as I stumble out of the saddle. I pull the helmet and the goggles off, tossing them to the ground and taking a few steps away from him. My breath is coming in hard gasps, emotions all over the place as I try to come to terms with everything I’m feeling.

Distantly, I hear the sounds of clinking metal and a heavy thud as the saddle hits the ground, but I can’t really focus on any of it while I’m reeling like this.