What Fire Dragons Treasure - Cristina Rayne Page 0,27

“How about you point out some of your favorite foods? Maybe describe how they taste? With my luck, I would pick out all the bitter-tasting foods that Matty would absolutely hate.”

Raphek raised an eyebrow. “And you wouldn’t?”

“I would hold my breath and swallow every mouthful as though it were the best thing I had ever tasted,” Amber admitted.

Raphek chuckled. “We wouldn’t want that.”

Amber desperately tried to ignore how the sound of his laugh seemed to make her cheeks warm.

“Can we taste one of those red ones?” Matty asked, pointing at a large pile of a plum-sized and blood-red food item arranged in the center of one of the food stalls. She hadn’t realized that he had been listening to her and Raphek’s conversation.

“You can if you like,” Raphek told him affably. “However, though that one may look pretty, it’s only really used in soups.”

“So, it’s a vegetable?” Amber asked.

“I suppose a root would be a better description. It has a bit of a—spicy flavor.”

“It’s not sweet like an apple, Matty. It’s like an onion or a pepper.”

Matty pouted. “Oh.”

Raphek bent down and told him, “How about I get you one of those big purple ones over there, instead? They’re as sweet as sugar.” He pointed to a small fruit stand a few feet farther down the stone-cobbled street.

Matty’s eyes lit up. “Okay!”

He then did something that had Amber’s eyes widening in shock. Matty dropped her hand and grabbed Raphek’s, tugging the dragon-man excitedly towards the fruit stand. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

It took Amber a moment to pick her jaw off the ground before she hurried after them. Matty was usually shy around adults he didn’t know, painfully so around men, especially if they were the loud and boisterous sort.

Come to think of it, both Raphek and Sevek had spent time around Matty yesterday while she had been sleeping off the effects of her healing, and now she was kicking herself for not taking at least Emma aside and asking her a ton of questions about that missing time. Raphek had, of course, talked with and interacted with Matty during their lunch with Princess Briana, but it had been understandably extremely limited. Not nearly enough in her experience for her son to lose his wariness of a stranger.

Had he had a great bit more positive interaction with him yesterday at Emma’s, or was the fact that Matty had seen Raphek turn into a dragon make him not really see their host as a man?

“That looks like a slightly rounder eggplant without the stem or the smooth skin,” Amber said, wrinkling her nose as she watched Matty take an enthusiastic bite out of the Elysian fruit. However, unlike eggplant, its insides were exactly the same color as its skin.

“It tastes like grape juice, Mommy,” Matty informed her with a purple-stained grin and then took another bite that crunched as though he were biting into an apple.

“Hopefully, it doesn’t have seeds like grapes,” Amber said, looking up at Raphek worriedly.

“It does, but the seeds are extremely soft—gelatinous, I believe is the English word for their consistency. Completely edible,” Raphek assured her.

“Taste it, Mommy,” Matty said offering up the large fruit with both hands.

The Rekkan woman that was selling the fruit was watching them with keen eyes. Suddenly feeling as though she were on display, herself, Amber nonetheless accepted the purple fruit and took a tentative bite. Just as a heavy, sweet flavor that did indeed taste remarkably like the grape juice boxes that Matty enjoyed hit her tongue, a squirt of fruit juice also splashed across her chin. A couple of drops had also likely landed onto the front of her borrowed tunic-dress.

And not a wet wipe or napkin in sight, Amber thought with a resigned sigh as she lowered the fruit from her mouth.

However, before she could wipe her chin with the back of her free hand, Raphek reached over and swiped a thumb firmly across her chin. “I think I got all of it.”

As Amber stood frozen at the unexpected touch, Raphek licked the juice off his thumb in a slow slide that suddenly had her blood heating up and her heart racing. The smile he flashed her afterward was so innocent that Amber immediately distrusted it. Then again—he couldn’t have meant that the way her treacherous body had interpreted it. Could he?

Aware that more than the eyes of the fruit seller were watching, Amber forced a benign smile onto her lips instead of continuing to freak out inside and said