“Hell, yes!” she said excitedly, taking his hand and holding tight as he led her out of the house and onto the back porch.
“I thought we’d just leave our clothes under a tree or something so we don’t have to walk back to the house naked,” Remi said.
Her eyes widened. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” She ran back inside Remi’s house and came back out with two heavy bath robes — identical except that one was visibly larger than the other. She held them up for him to see sheepishly.
“You got us matching bathrobes?” he asked.
“Hey, I’m stumbling around here doing my best as I try to figure this whole thing out. It felt right, okay?” she snapped.
He took the robes from her and draped them over his arm as he took her hand and led her down the steps of his porch, from under the carport and out into the pouring rain. “Works for me,” he said.
Cristie grinned as she heard his words, and followed him, almost vibrating she was so excited. She’d never seen his Dragon.
They walked through the rain, the wind whipping the cold, hard drops against their skin, but neither even flinched. The thunder sounded all around them, and yet somehow it didn’t frighten either one of them. They crossed the rise behind Lucas’ house, and only went a little further into the shelter of the tree line before Remi dropped her hand and turned to her, his clothes soaked and sticking to his skin, his wavy, dark hair hanging in soft, dripping curls around his face and brushing the tops of his shoulders, the eyes of his Dragon peering at her through his eyes.
Cristie’s breath caught at the sight of his bright orange eyes glowing through the rain at her.
“You good?” he asked, his voice a little more growly than before.
“Very good!” she answered. “So excited! A little scared,” she admitted.
“I will never allow you to be harmed in any circumstance,” he said as he laid the two bathrobes below the tree they stood beneath, then pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it to the ground at their feet.
“I know,” she said, taking her own shirt off and dropping it beside his.
Remi toed his shoes off, then pulled his socks off, before unzipping his soaked jeans and forcing them down his thighsand calves before dropping them on top of their pile of clothes. Last were his briefs, which were tossed to the side without a second thought.
He stretched his body, his arms over his head, and shook the water out of his hair futilely, as the rain continued to lash at them, though the tree they stood under did give a little bit of a break from its ferocity. After stretching a bit, he turned to Cristie and found her completely nude, standing in the rain her eyes glued to his body. “Fuck me,” he whispered, his gaze traveling down her body and up again.
When his eyes came to a stop on her face, she realized he was looking at her. “You’re gorgeous,” she breathed out, her gaze taking in all that he was head to toe.
He smiled at her, his expression giving away a bit of embarrassment at her compliment. “I only have one question.”
“What’s that?” she asked, taking a step toward him.
“How do you feel about flying?”
Her eyes lit up.
“You’ll have to shift back into your human form so you can hold on, but if you’re not afraid, after you run and I fly for a while, I’ll come back for you and we can fly together.”
“Yes, please!” she exclaimed.
“When you see me land and lower myself to the ground, shift into your human form and climb on.”
“Will the lightning hit us?”
He looked up at the sky, blinking against the rain. “It’s not lightning. But even if it was, it hasn’t hit me yet.”
“That’s good enough for me.” She stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder while she raised herself up on tiptoe to reach him. She pressed her lips to his, then stepped back, and shifted into her Panther. She stood there, whipping her tail back and forth, while waiting for him to shift.
“You are such a beautiful, wild creature! How did I never see you before?” he asked.
Cristie’s Panther rubbed her cheeks against his calves, then took out through the woods, looking over her shoulder to be sure he was following.
Remi followed for a few hundred feet until she led him to a clearing, half the size of a football field, with a stream running at its edge. There he threw his head back and roared as his body began to quiver and change shape.
Cristie’s Panther watched, unable to determine if the rain was distorting the appearance of his body as it changed making it hard to focus on, or if his body was actually distorting, making changes so fast on its own that she couldn’t focus on it. Either way, only moments later, a Dragon roared his excitement at finally being freed to roam in his natural state.
