To Enchant a Dragon by Amanda Milo Page 0,7
loftily, his tail snapping in the air and his claws causing more rock to crumble free of the perch he’s claimed for himself as he shifts his dark-scaled body. If he keeps squeezing his jut of rock, it’s going to crack and crash onto the beach, but I’m sure with his wings up and half-flared like they are that he can catch himself before he falls far, and surely before he hits the sand.
His crest flares and snaps back down, an ultra-rapid movement not unlike a shrug as he finally agrees. “Very well. Let’s hope you’re right that the warning calls were enough.”
Warning calls. Dear heavens.
He glances down and easily dives off his rock perch.
As he launches from it, it does indeed crack, the chunks tumbling down, killer boulders that slap and smack so deep in the sand they’re almost instantly buried by the impact.
The dragon pays this no mind, easily wading through the water towards me.
The seawater that he’s brought me to isn’t deep enough for me to fully submerge in, but it keeps the worst of the dryness away.
Still… I’m miserable.
The dragon tries to cheer me up. Once he’s reached my side, he raises his foot over my lap and opens his claws to reveal a gnarled, tubular branch of fulgurite.
“Lightning glass,” I say in wonder.
Sand is fused to the rock-hard bit of hollow glass, a naturally-occurring work of art when lightning bolts strike the beach.
When I don’t immediately take hold of the gift he’s holding aloft, the dragon sets it on my lap and noses it towards my belly button.
Before he can get there, the touch of the dragon’s snout over the hidden slit of my sex makes my tail fin flap.
To cover my reaction, I sit up straighter in the water and take hold of the present he was thoughtful enough to bring me. “Thank you,” I tell him.
“You’re welcome,” he replies. He’s eyeing my position in the water—he’s eyeing the clear lack of water here. “You need a better place than this to make a home,” he comments, clearly unhappy to see me poorly matched to my environment.
The fact that he notices my predicament and cares about my welfare is what’s been keeping me from shouting at him. I want to be returned home immediately. I need to be in the sea. But while at first I was afraid of my captor, now I’m reluctant to hurt this strange creature’s feelings.
He’s a dragon, but so far… he’s been a good one. He believes I’m his mate for now, and I’m hoping that because he sees me as an equal and not a meal, that he’ll come to his senses and take me home very soon.
“I’ll scout out a better spot,” the dragon vows, his wings folding back and his green eyes glowing with earnestness. “I only need to recover a little first.”
I scan him, wondering if the flights back and forth were that much of an exertion on his powerful body.
His wings bend outward as he bends his neck low—bowing to me, I discover before he leaves to patrol the area, his tail winding back and forth like a giant anaconda of darkness behind him.
A happy hiss erupts from him when he discovers a coastal cavern large enough for him to enter it, and he’s delighted to find a fresh water spring complete with cavefish hidden inside of the thing.
I’m amused as I watch him explore, and I find my gaze repeatedly going back to him while he makes his rounds, protecting this territory he has claimed.
My cheeks fire with a blush when the dragon gallops through the sea spray just to bring me a seashell, and I feel my heartbeat quicken when he returns to proudly bestow me with interesting bits of ship wreckage, because… well, for a mermaid, this is quite the courting gesture.
It used to be, anyway.
Mermen are such a rarity that they rarely form any sort of mate-pair anymore. Romantic gestures are a bit of a thing of the past for our kind.
That this dragon—Kalos, I silently refer to him in my mind—seems to enjoy collecting treasure to the degree I do is interesting. I too am inclined to hunt for whatever glitters, whatever I can hoard. And I happen to love seashells.
I clutch Kalos’s gifts to me, deciding that I’ll keep them even when he takes me back. Holding them makes me hungry to dig for my own treasure as well, and eventually, I can’t resist my own hunting in