Page 33 of Knotted by the Mountain Man Dragon

I am a dragon.

Massive. Sleek black scales, dark as charcoal, shot through with veins of ember that pulse with heat. Wings that span thirty feet. Eyes that glow molten gold. Smoke pouring from my jaws. Heat rolling off me in waves that turn the rain to steam before it touches my hide.

I throw myself over her.

My wings come down like a vault. My body curls around hers. I hear the tree hit, feel the impact shudder through my scales, across my spine, and I absorb it. A hundred feet of ancient wood crashing down on my back, and I take it because she is underneath me and nothing in this world or any other will touch her while I’m breathing.

The crash fades. Rain hammers my scales. Branches settle.

Silence.

Then, from somewhere beneath my wings:

“Cage?”

Her voice is small. Shaking. But steady.

I shift my wings slightly. Just enough to let gray light filter through. She’s crouched beneath me, her bag still pressed to her chest, her hair plastered to her face, looking up at me with wide eyes.

Not at a man.

At a dragon.

Black scales inches from her face. Ember-glow pulsing through the cracks. Eyes the size of her fist, burning gold, focused entirely on her. Smoke curling from nostrils that could swallow her whole.

She reaches up. Her hand touches my jaw.

Her fingers press against scales that are hot enough to scald someone who wasn’t my mate, and she strokes the ridge of my jaw, gently, and says:

“There you are.”

My dragon makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before. Low and shuddering. Like a purr, if a purr could shake the ground. The dragon equivalent of falling completely, irreversibly apart.

I shift back. It takes longer than usual because my dragon doesn’t want to let go of this form, not now, not when she just touched his face and spoke to him like he was something worthy of tenderness instead of something to fear.

But I come back to human. Naked. Crouched over her in the rain. The tree is behind me, broken across the space where she was standing five seconds ago. My scales saved her. My body saved her.

She’s looking at me.

Not at the destruction behind me. Not at the tree. At me.

“You’re naked,” she says.

“Shifting does that.”

“In the rain.”

“Yes.”

“You just turned into a dragon the size of a building and fell on me to block a tree.”

“Yes.”

She reaches up and puts her hand on my face. Her palm against my jaw, her thumb tracing my cheekbone, rain running between her fingers.

“Take me home,” she whispers. “Right now.”

I drive home in extra clothes from the shop.