him, and allowing myself to enjoy his company, I can almost imagine riding him without crippling terror.
Chapter 16
Steph
The rain is pouring in huge, ugly gray sheets of water as we wait out the storm beneath the canopy of a tree with long, gnarled limbs and giant leaves. While it seems to work well enough for blocking the worst of the rain, fat drops of water splatter through. What manages to land on me soaks my hair so thoroughly that cold water runs in a constant torrent down the nape of my neck. I reach back and grab huge handfuls of it and squeeze it out, but, even so, I know I’m not getting enough out to prevent the cold drips. I shiver miserably as I squint at the gray forest around us.
Eliph stares out at the forest, looking just as wet and miserable since he’s assumed his fae form to shelter me as much as possible with his big body. He’s pressed right up against me, hunched over so I’m nearly surrounded by him, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth on this one. In fact, I lean into him, allowing myself to enjoy the warm brush of his large body against mine, and the thrill of his touch whenever his hand absently skims over me. Not to mention the fact that he’s blocking about sixty percent of the rain that I can see sluicing off his protective covering of fur.
“I’ve heard that it rains a lot in the southern forest, but this is some kind of hell,” Grimsal mutters as he whips off his hat and wrings out the felt before plopping the soggy thing back on his head with a look of distaste.
Eliph wrinkles his nose as a fat drop of water rolls down it and sighs.
“Nagas have control over the weather. I would not be surprised if a storm was sent over the territory following our departure to slow us down with the intention of driving us to shelter. Which is exactly what we are not going to do.” He grimaces and tucks his head down to meet my eyes apologetically. “I’m afraid this means we will be forced to make camp as we travel through their territories.”
“Camp,” I repeat like it’s a foreign word. I laugh a little at that, hoping that he’s joking but he stares dismally back at me.
Oh, fuck, he’s not joking.
I wiggle my manicured fingernails at him. “Honey, does it look like I camp? Let me answer that for you… No. I haven’t slept outdoors since I was a kid. I kind of thought that this trip would involve comfortable places to rest overnight that involved wine, food, and a roaring fire.”
“Two out of four?” he asks pleasantly as he stares up at the canopy as if trying to gauge how much longer it’s going to rain.
I narrow my eyes despite the humor I can feel attempting to bubble up through me at his adopted innocent expression.
“Let me guess—whatever you can catch and a campfire if we can manage to get one going with all the damp wood?” I reply with a snicker.
His annoyed scowl at the rain shifts to a sheepish look as he meets my eyes again. It would almost be almost cute if the situation wasn’t as far from cute as it gets.
“Don’t worry yourself. We’ll be fine,” the goblin assures me. “Consider this just another part of the adventure. At least our world doesn’t have ticks, mosquitos, and fire ants… You’ve got some nasty biters in your world, for sure. We do get arachnid species of unusual size here and there, but I doubt we’ll run into them.”
“Comforting,” I mutter, rolling my eyes.
“Not helping, goblin,” Eliph grumbles in a distinctly put out manner.
The goblin obviously couldn’t care less about my comfort, Eliph is at least interested in my happiness, regardless of his reasons for it.
“Well, I would find it comforting,” Grimsal retorts. “Sleeping outdoors here is far less to complain about than in their world, and I have stomached that a few times when necessity demanded. I had a rattlesnake bite me on the ass in Arizona. If you want to know about a camping inconvenience…”
“We do not,” my grumpy unicorn cuts him off in a way that makes me grateful, because right now I have zero interest in hearing about venomous snakes or that goblin’s ass.
Grimsal snorts and gives me a wicked grin that lets me know that he’s been dicking around