Time Slipping (26 page)

“No.”

I laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “Yes.”

“No.”

“Why not?!” I almost stomped my foot, I was so mad.

“Because, I have chosen you.”

My chin went back into my neck. “Chosen me? Chosen me for what?”

“To be my mate.”

I just kept blinking over and over. I could have sworn I heard him say
mate,
but that couldn’t have been right.
Mate? As in … a ship’s mate, right? Matey? The word for buds in Australia?
 
Relief rushed through me when I realized he had to have meant the other kind of mate. I smiled and heaved out a sigh. “Ooooh, yeah. Mates. Good’day mate!” I gave him a happy sideways fist pump. “Throw another shrimp on the barbie, mate!”

When I saw the look in his eyes and felt the heat from his breath wash over me, I knew I was hoping for something that just wasn’t happening on his end. “But … I’m not even a dragon,” I said lamely.

His talon came out and flipped my hand over, and my fingers opened all on their own. There in the palm of my hand was that goddamn dragon eyeball looking up at me.

I held it up in front of me, facing him. “What? This?” I snorted and frowned. “It’s just a single scale. One eyeball. And I don’t know what planet you’re from, but nowhere in this solar system does one scale and one eyeball make a dragon.”

He got up from his sitting position and moved toward me. I backed up until I couldn’t go any farther, my heels dangling over the edge of the ledge. His big claw came out toward me and stopped against my lower back a moment before he used it to pull me close to him. His body curved into a semi-circle again, and I was drawn into the center of it, my back eventually resting up against his underbelly. It was covered in scales, but they weren’t nearly as hard as the others, and the warmth was the perfect temperature to keep the chill from the cave away. I could have totally stabbed him and ended my little problem right there, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I left those troll’s guts alone, and I had to do the same for the dragon. I just didn’t have the murdering gene in me. Niles would have called me a sucker and a failure, but funnily enough, I didn’t feel like either one of those things. I was just … tired. Too tired to figure things out.

“Sleep,” he said in a deep purring voice. “Biad, sleep.”

I slid down onto my butt and hung my head, utterly defeated. “Oh for chrissake,” I sighed out. “How in the hell am I going to get out of this realm now?” I’d had my share of epic screw-ups to date, but this one really took the cake. I could already imagine an entire assembly hall of all the fae in existence, laughing their asses off at me as the announcement was made that I was claimed as a mate by a dragon.
A dragon’s mate! For life!
Ha!
And how was that supposed to work, anyway? We didn’t even have the right body parts for it. And I’d thought demon junk was going to be a problem; demon junk ain’t got nothin’ on dragon junk.

It was too ridiculous not to laugh at. I fell asleep half laughing and half crying to the sounds of a dragon purring out a mesmerizing drone that for some crazy reason made me feel as if I were as safe as I could ever be.

Chapter Thirty-Three

SOMETHING WAS DISTURBING MY SLEEP. A noise. A buzzing, annoying noise. An alarm clock, maybe? It was going off too early; I needed another two hours at least. I moaned, rolling over, hoping it would go away or that someone would shut it off for me. Where was Spike, anyway? He was always good for pressing the snooze button as I snored into my pillow.

The hard surface I was lying on made it impossible for me to block out those sounds, and apparently Spike was running around in the forest somewhere. I was too damn uncomfortable to sleep at that point, anyway. I cracked an eye open.
Hard surface? Where’s my bed?

A dim, golden light came from off in the distance, but where I was, it was pitch black. Someone had turned the heat up, too.
Damn, why is it so stuffy in here? And why does it smell like I took a bath in a sulfur spring?

Memories came rushing back as I woke further. The last bits of my fantasy where I was waking up in my bed back at the fae compound disappeared like pixie fart smoke into the darkness around me. My body froze as I tried to figure out whether I was still cuddled up to my new dragon boyfriend.

“Jayne!” came a loud whisper from over in the direction of the dim light.

My heart leaped in my chest.
I’m not alone, thank all that is holy!
“Yeah!” I whisper-yelled back.

“It’s me! Tim!”

I smiled like a loon, wondering what in the hell made him think I didn’t already know that. “Yeah! I got that!”

“You need to get out of there!”

“No shit, Sherlock.” I crawled forward, feeling my way along the ground while trying to avoid having the worst of the rocks jab into my knees and shins. Every crunch and slide through the dirt made me cringe. The dragon was right there next to me, sleeping but probably not deeply enough. Every few seconds, a huff of hot air came out of his nostrils along with a curl of smoke.

“Are you still pixelated?”

“No, no thanks to you, butthead.” I was almost to the dragon’s face, so I clamped my mouth shut and held my breath. Getting up into a crouched position, I was able to move faster, tiptoeing as gingerly as possible over the ground just in front of the dragon’s sleeping head.

“Hey! That’s called a rescue from certain death, so you’re welcome. You can give me a foot massage thank you later.” Tim had a special little device that looked like a mini hairbrush that his wife tapped on the bottom of his feet at night before bed. He said it was pure reflexology, designed to make him relax. I wouldn’t have been one bit surprised to find him harboring that thing in his fanny pack.
Pffft. The day I give a pixie a foot rub is the day I’m smoking a cig after a bout of hot dragon sex.
I shuddered, the very image of that jumping right into my brain in full technicolor.
Holy giant dragon junk. Yikes, I need to get out of here.

When I got to the ledge, I looked down. Tim was hovering in the air just below me. I lifted my eyes to the space beyond. It was impossibly huge, impossibly far down, and impossible to cross when not being held in the claws of a dragon. The pile of coins and other crap went almost up to the edge of the ledge, but I knew if I tried to climb down on them, they’d turn into an avalanche of metal and cover me in seconds; I’d die under their weight. I was completely and totally screwed.

“Just go, Tim,” I said, feeling sadder than I could ever remember feeling. Not only was I stuck in a realm where I didn’t belong, I was locked inside a dark cave with a dragon who had a crush on me.

Tim flew up even with my face, his expression confused.

My hands went up to my hips. “What?”

He didn’t say anything. He just stared at my forehead.

“What are you looking at?”

He started to smile. “I’m looking at your new hairstyle, actually. It suits you.”

My eyes rolled up in an effort to see what he was talking about. “What new hairstyle?”

He waved his hands around. “Oh, never mind. Let’s talk about how we’re going to get you out of here.”

The idea that Tim would try to distract me from something he found amusing about my appearance made me instantly suspicious. I reached up to feel my hair, expecting to find a giant knot or something equally ugly, but when my hand first touched nothing, and then touched something prickery, I yanked it back. “What in the hell…?”

I touched it again. Where I used to have bangs, I had nothing — just stubble about an inch long. “What happened to my hair?!” My voice echoed out into the big chamber, and the dragon huffed out a big puff of smoke and moved in response.

“Jayne! Shhhh!” Tim hissed. “You’ll wake him up!”

I gritted my teeth together and slowly turned, expecting to see a giant eyeball bearing down on me. But the beast remained asleep, and for the moment, I still had time to contemplate my doom in peace.

“You have to go, Tim. If he sees you here, he’ll fry your butt.”

“Why can’t you just leave?” he asked, sounding desperate. “You’re not pixelated anymore. You can clearly see this isn’t your home.”

My eyes were practically bugging out of my head with the effort of not yelling my response. “Yeah! You think I don’t know that!” My hissing voice echoed all over the place, making it sound like there was steam escaping a pipe somewhere. “But he’s decided that I’m Biad, and Biad is his mate!”

Tim’s head backed up. “Say what?”

“Yeah! You heard me right! I’m his girlfriend now or his wife or whatever, so he says I have to stay forever.” I folded my arms across my chest.

Tim looked up at my head again. “Wow. Who would’ve thought that
this
was the hairstyle it took to reel in a big fish like that.”

“Stop fucking around, Tim! This is serious!”

“I know. How is that going to work exactly? I mean … the proportions…” He looked down at my nether regions and shuddered.

I dropped my face into my hands. “Please let’s not talk about dragon junk right now. I can’t take it.”

He was up on my shoulder in no time. “Okay, roomie. No dragon junk talk. Let’s talk escape plan. How about that?”

I took a deep breath and lifted my head, feeling strangely calm. “That would be awesome. Let’s dream about that. How about … I grow some wings and fly away?”

“Orrrr … you could slide down that rainbow right there and meet me at the bottom.” He flew out in front of me and pointed to the heap of coins that ended near my feet.

“Excellent idea, so long as you don’t mind me be squashed under a ton of gold at the bottom.”

“Hmmm … you might have a point. How about this…” He flew off and came back very slowly and with great effort, holding onto a silver tray, dragging it up the pile of coins.

I cringed as each inch of progress was met with the sound of several coins falling loose and sliding down the pile. A glance back at the dragon told me he was a heavy sleeper, but I had no idea how long that was going to last. I laid down on my stomach and reached over the ledge, grabbing the tray as soon as it was close enough.

Tim’s flight path after I grabbed it wasn’t exactly straight. He practically fell over my shoulder onto his stomach and lay there gasping for air for a while. I worked on getting the tray up on the ledge as quietly as possible while he recovered from his rescue mission. When it was secure, I got up from my stomach and sat with my legs crossed, looking out over the treasure. “Okay, so now I have a silver platter. I can offer the dragon my virginity on it. Sweet, idea, Tim. Thanks for that extra bit of awfulness.”

Tim got up with the help of a clump of my hair. He leaned on my ear while he talked. “First of all, how many virginities is one girl allowed to have? And second, this is not for offering anything. This is your surfboard.”

I stared at the platter for a few seconds as my brain computed what he’d said. I choked out a semi-laugh. “You actually think I’m going to stand on this thing that’s just barely big enough to fit my two feet on, so I can slide down this pile of coins? Now I
know
you’re insane.”

“No, dummy, you’re supposed to
sit
on it, hold onto those handy-dandy handles there, and slide down on your big fat butt.”

“Where are my feet supposed to go?”

“I don’t know! Out to the sides! Tucked under! Do what you think is best, but do it soon, because I think sleeping beauty over there is going to wake up any second, and we need to get everyone out of here.”

“Everyone? What do you mean,
everyone
?”

He snorted. “You didn’t think you’d run off into the forest and your friends wouldn’t come looking for you, did you?”

I tried to remember what I’d been thinking over the past few hours, but I couldn’t bring a damn thing to mind. “I don’t know. Why did I leave them in the first place?”

“It’s a long story that I will really enjoy telling you another time. Just not now. Come on. Put your big butt on that thing and let’s ride.”

“But what if I get buried in gold coins and die under the weight?”

“And what if your dragon boyfriend wakes up and tells you it’s time to do the nasty?”

I nodded. “You’re right. Lesser of two evils wins.”

“Yeah. Ixnay on the agon-dray unk-jay, that’s what I always say.” Tim flew in front of me as I positioned the tray on the edge of the ledge. “Okay, roomie, now first, before you go, I think you should put one of your amaza-bubbles around you just to be sure. Make it a bouncy one.”

“Okay.” I nodded, pulling some of the Earth element into me. When I noticed more than a tiny bit of it made the dragon twitch, I eased off until there was just a hint. Apparently it wasn’t just pixies who felt The Green in their wings. “Done.”

“Second, tell me out loud that if you die, I can stay in your suite of rooms with my family for as long as we live.”

I frowned. “Why do I have to say that out loud?”

He held up something tiny in his hand. “Recording device. For posterity. In case any of those jealous wannabe pixies back at the compound think they can move in on my territory when you’re gone.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “You’ve thought of everything.”

“I’m a Sagittarius, Jayne. Comes with the territory.”

“Fine. I, Jayne, Mother of all fae and Earth and Water elemental, hereby say that Tim and his family can stay in my pad for as long as they all shall live.”

He grinned, looking surprised. “Well done, Elemental.”

I reached out to push him away. “Move. I don’t want to pixie splat you.”

“I’ll be right here with you,” he said, taking a position on my shoulder.

“Awesome.” It made me feel just a little better about not dying. At least I wouldn’t go down without a witness to my fate, anyway.

“Unless you start to biff, then I’m outta here.”

I laughed. “Of course you are.”

“You ready?” he asked after I’d settled my butt onto the too-small platter and took up the handles.

“As ready as I’m ever going to be, I guess.”

He patted me on the head and took a clump of hair in hand. “Well, giddyup, then, Donkeh! We’ve got a wave to ride! Woo hoo!”