“Dammit, Brooklyn, are you stupid?” I asked, leaning up, watching the dragon warily.
My head popped out of my bubble, but the rest of me remained in the bubble, protected and dry.
Yes, I’m talking to you, the dragon informed me with a regality that made me want to bow at her feet.
Was that allowed? Did humans bow to dragons?
No, you do not have to bow to me, child. If you’ll concentrate on the shield around your head, it should appear without much effort on your part.
The backdoor behind me opened, but I concentrated on making a bubble around my face, eyes widening as I felt it pop back in place.
“Wow,” I breathed.
What was going on?
Was I manifesting powers because I was in a dragon rider’s home? Did one get powers just from being around dragons? Would I be like Superman? The Hulk? Captain America?
I chanced a look back at Nikolai, and he stood there, frozen, staring at me like I’d done something he hadn’t expected me to do.
“Shit,” he breathed.
I blinked.
“You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?” I accused, pointing a finger at him.
“Lucy,” the dragon teased in a Spanish accent. “You got some ‘splainin to do.”
Nikolai glared at something over my shoulder, and I whipped around.
Because, hello!
There was a dragon at my back!
My bubble disintegrated.
Whatever control I’d had over the bubble like thing around me was gone, and I was no longer being protected from the rain.
I’d never seen a dragon this close before.
Of course, everyone in Dallas had seen one a time or two in the air.
But it was a rare treat that one saw them from this close.
Dragons, from what I’d been told, were solitary by nature.
They didn’t like large crowds. Small crowds. Or medium crowds. You get the picture.
They didn’t like people much, period.
And they certainly didn’t spend time with humans that didn’t have dragon rider blood.
Mostly because you never knew who you could trust.
Hell, I was a pretty normal woman.
A new nurse.
A twenty-six-year-old, nearly virgin.
Well, that probably wasn’t so normal, but you catch my drift.
I was an everyday, run of the mill, female American.
I must’ve been really special for the dragon to talk to me…that, or maybe screwed in the head.
“Stop putting yourself down. You’re completely fine,” Nikolai snapped.
I narrowed my eyes.
He needed to stop reading my mind, if he didn’t like what went through it.
“I need answers, and not the vague answers you’ve been giving me the last couple of days,” I ordered darkly.
Nikolai sighed, sitting down on the edge of the door, allowing his feet to extend out into the rain.
He was wearing a pair of black basketball shorts
“I don’t think you’re ready for the answers you seek yet,” he said evasively, opening the door with a fucking key and waving me inside.
I narrowed my eyes, but nonetheless followed him inside, looking only once over my shoulder at the dragon that was no longer there.
“Who are you to tell me I’m not ready? I’m tired of being treated like I’m a child,” I snarled.
My fear must’ve finally made itself known to him, and he dropped his head to his hands before he exploded in a flurry of movement.
He groaned and stood up, ripping his wet t-shirt off over his chest.
And it was then that I saw the tattoo again.
It looked like an exact replica of mine, and I’d been telling myself for the past twenty-four hours that, maybe, I’d been dreaming when I saw the tattoo yesterday after breakfast.
Almost as if we’d hugged, and my tattoo had rubbed off on him where our skin had met.
My mouth fell open and I stared in shock.
“You have my tattoo,” I accused smartly.
He nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Well…I do know. But I don’t know why.”
I scrunched my nose up in confusion.
“What does that even mean?” I asked.
He sighed and started forward, offering me his hand.
“Follow me. I have something you can read. And once you’re done, if you have any questions, I’ll answer them,” he said, leading me through the maze of hallways.
I realized, as if in a daze, that I’d turned right instead of left, which would’ve taken me to the kitchen instead of the copious amount of hallways that I’d taken instead.
“You need one of those maps that malls put up that says, ‘You are here’ on each corner,” I mumbled distractedly.
I was distracted because I could feel the body heat emanating off of the man.
He felt like a ball of fire in the middle of a blizzard.
I wanted to wrap myself around him and rub my face against his pecs.
Maybe wrap my legs around his face…okay. I needed to quit. I was clearly getting out of hand.
Nikolai didn’t seem to notice my wayward thoughts, only kept trudging forward without a care.
Luckily, I managed to shake it off once I reached what I realized was his own personal office.