Page 19 of Red Fire

9

Octavia

I gasp as my eyes open.

Where am I?

Arms close more tightly around me. There’s warm skin and a heart beating beneath my right ear, which is plastered against a chest. Creed’s chest. I’m on his lap, straddling him. His breath tickles the top of my head as he breathes in a rhythm that tells me he is fast asleep.

We’re okay. We’re alive. I must have fallen asleep while he carried me. He ran for what felt like hours. I can’t believe I fell asleep.

Trying not to move, I let my eyes rove around our hiding place. Through the thick canopy, the sunlight casts dapples all around us. We’re nestled inside a grove of thick, thorny bushes.

I suck in a breath when I realize that Creed is rock hard…down there, pressed up against me. It’s hard to miss because he’s so big. I know that this is perfectly normal. I mean, I was with Joshua for almost three years before we split up. We never actually moved in together, but we slept over at each other’shouses all the time. We shared a bed; we had sex. I know that it’s normal for men to wake up like this. It doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t a reaction to me or anything. I shouldn’t be alarmed or upset about it.

Having said that, I am straddling him, so this is far from normal. His very erect cock is pressing up against my sex. Thank goodness for my jeans, which are the only barrier between us. I’m not going to freak out. I’m not! Even though my bra-clad breasts are mashed up against his chest. Even though freaking out has become my situation normal since arriving at Mistveil…I still refuse to let it happen.

His breathing changes, then his hand moves up on my back a few inches, and his body tenses. Crap! He’s awake. His cock gives this little twitch against me, making me gasp. Then he pulls me away as he sucks in a breath. He lets me go, and I scoot back across the dirt to the closest thorn bush. I stop just shy of getting my back scratched up.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Shit.” He scrubs a hand over his face and then uses that same hand to cup his junk. “Sorry…I…” He looks everywhere else before his gaze fixes on me.

“It’s fine. It’s one of those things.” I flap a hand. I don’t want him to talk about it. I’m praying he just drops the whole thing.

“It…it isn’t like that, I…I won’t hurt you, I swear. It’s—”

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I know you didn’t mean it like that. It’s fine. I’m sorry I fell asleep last night. I made you carry me all that way.”

“You are a tiny human. You’re much weaker than I am. It was nothing.” He shrugs.

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“What? Tiny?” He frowns. “You are very small, especially compared to me.”

I warm up inside at the thought that he thinks I’m tiny. Although I’m not overweight or anything, I’m hardly tiny. Ilike my food. I shove the thought aside and concentrate on our conversation. “No, you keep calling me a human.”

“Because you are one,” he says.

“So are you. It isn’t normal, Creed. You say it like youaren’thuman, which is insane because you look like one to me.” I look down at the thin slice on my arm. It has scabbed over. “Why did you cut me? What did you use to cut me? I’m getting a funny feeling about all of this. I don’t like it.”

“I used one of my nails.” He holds up a finger. His nails are short and blunt. There’s no way he used them to cut my arm. Why would he lie? Maybe he used a sharp stone. Why doesn’t he just tell me the truth? This makes no sense.

“I needed your blood to make it more believable that you fell down the gully.” He goes on, “I hung your shirt up by the edge, snagging it on a branch. I made it look like you went over the edge. I did it to buy us time, or we would never have managed an escape.”

“It must have worked.” I lift my brows.

He nods once. “It did, but a group of the guys went down there. They will know by now that you are still alive. They will be looking for you as we speak,” he says under his breath. “More of them will catch on soon enough.”

I frown. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to ask the question, but I do anyway. “What made those loud screeching noises? And the flapping? It sounded like something big.”

Please don’t say it.

Please!

His jaw tightens, and his eyes seem to darken. “Dragons. I know you don’t believe in them, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.”

“Dragons.” I swallow thickly. “Are you sure?” I replay the sounds in my head. I’ve never heard a dragon before, but if I did, I’m sure it would sound very much like that.

“Of course I’m sure. I live here.”