AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When you see such a beautifully magnificent yet haunting creature like a dragon in the movies or on a television screen, none of that even remotely prepares you for how enormous it is in real life. Standing there in the mouth of the cave, I felt like an ant about to be smashed by a giant. Its nostrils flared, the icy breath rising into the air all around it and casting it in a smoky haze that made it seem even more menacing that it already was.
Steely grey spherical eyes bored into mine as his snout furrowed with what I imagined was monstrous rage. A deep rumbling growl echoed throughout the cave, bouncing off the walls and making him seem even bigger than he was already. He bared his teeth, and I was terrified to notice that some of them were as long as my arm. I’d be no more than a small bite if he decided he needed a morning snack.
Do dragons have a normal diet, or are human girls just a tasty dessert?
The morning light glinted off the menacing scales along his back. The thick covering of scales continued all over his body, a deep metallic blue that would likely be almost impossible to see flying by in the dark of the midnight sky. There was a jagged ridgeline of pointed spires down the line of his spine and a lethal-looking spiked ball at the end of his tail that swept back and forth like a royally ticked off cat.
I wish I had a bag of cat nip, or maybe dragon nip or whatever would make this very angry monster seem a bit tamer.
I took a step back, rethinking this whole waking up in a solitary cave thing. What if I’d been left here as some sort of weird religious sacrifice? Had someone found out I was a virgin, served me up on a snowy cave platter, and now here I was about to be swallowed whole by a dragon?
This wasn’t an introvert’s retreat after all.
I’d been enjoying my breakfast by the fire, feeding several larger logs onto the burning embers to keep it going for a good long while. Beside the steady, crackling flames, I’d grown warm enough to take the fur gloves off my usually cold hands. In a fit of curiosity, I’d tasted most of the baskets of food, taking small bites and enjoying the different flavors of my small, homey abode.
I should have known things were going too well up here in my private getaway in the snowy mountains, and something like a dragon wanting to eat me would come around to ruin it.
I stared back at him, wincing as he sighed noisily. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was a male dragon, but it just felt like he was one as he stared at me with those beady blue eyes. I imagined that he was deciding whether or not to eat me or flatten me into the ground with his foot.
Suddenly, he shifted from a dragon into a human man, and he didn’t just turn into a normal male specimen either. He transformed into a huge, handsome beast that took my breath away at first sight. I wanted to reach out to him and run my fingers through his messy mane of thick, dark blonde hair, but I kept myself still. His dark blue eyes were the same color as his scales, yet the way he was looking at me made me even more terrified of his human form than his dragon one.
The dragon could kill me, and I’d go quick. This man, however, looked like he could really hurt me and that he’d enjoy it.
I gritted my teeth, vowing to remain vigilant against him.
His jawline was sharp, covered by a thick, dark blond five-o-clock shadow. High cheekbones carved out his features, set off by a strong, slightly crooked nose. His eyebrows were bushy, yet somehow still groomed. His features were striking, but it was the rest of him that proved to be deeply unsettling.
Although he was wearing a heavy white fur mantle of his own, it did nothing but emphasize the broad set of his shoulders. At least a full foot and a half taller than me, even his physical form felt like a threat. Underneath the fur-lined garment, he was wearing a cream-colored shirt that clung to his body like a glove, revealing the hard, chiseled muscles of his chest and the ridged plane of his abdomen. In the normal world, my mouth would have watered at the sight.
I glanced down, noticing that his thighs were thick like tree trunks. Dark grey slacks clung to his rigid musculature, making him seem even larger than life the longer I was in his presence. When he finally took a step towards me, I opened my mouth and decided he was maybe two feet taller than I had originally thought.
“I think I’ve lost my mind,” I murmured, only realizing I’d spoken aloud until after it was too late, and the words had already fell off my lips.
What a way to go. Good job, Ella. Now he thinks you’re a dumbass.
My inner voice was a bitch. I ignored her for the time being.
“Who are you?” he snarled, his gaze glowering down at me. His voice was laced with fury as his hands clenched into fists at his side. I didn’t know if he was going to lash out and hit me, so I took a step back and tried to keep as much distance as possible between us. His chest rose and fell and what was truly alarming was that I could sense his restraint. What was he holding himself back from doing? Hurting me? Killing me? Taking my precious sacrificial virginity?
“You were a dragon,” I squeaked lamely. It sounded even worse than I thought it would.
“Answer the question, human,” he growled.
I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. I could grab a burning stick from the fire and escape into the back of the cave. I didn’t know if it went back that far though, or if I would just be luring him into a chase where I ended up cornered and he’d eat me for breakfast.
“Ella Snow,” I whispered. He’d probably think it was fake in a place like this.
“How did you get here?” he pressed. His annoyance was rising, and so was my sense of alarm.
“I don’t know,” I answered, unable to keep my feet from retreating a step or two each time he spoke. The shadows were starting to close in around me. The light of the fire only went so far, the dark more overwhelming the deeper I went.
Honestly, if I had gone crazy, this was a really powerful figment of my imagination.
“You’re notreal,” I whispered.
He took a step towards me, and I walked right back into the rock wall, knocking the back of my head in the process. I flinched, but I tried to hide how much it hurt. Trapped, I looked left and then right, trying to figure out some avenue of escape out of this increasingly dire situation, but he closed in on me before I could even think about lifting my foot and running as fast as I could.
His palm slapped against the rock right next to my head as he stared down at me. The gravity of his icy stare held me captive, not allowing me to look away even though I very much wanted to. I jumped, taken aback by the sound of flesh against rock and overwhelmed in an instant by his sheer size in relation to mine.
