Mate Of A Dragon Villain (Skeleton Key) (8 page)

“That is our way out.”

Amanda shivered. Now she knew where the smell had come from.

Oh God.

I
t wasn’t a remotely
pleasant way out, or even one that smelled decent. When Amanda tried breathing through her mouth, the smell still seemed to waft up her nose, and breathing through her mouth gave her the weird impression that she was swallowing any bacteria that was in the air, which seemed infinitely worse than smelling.

She put up with the wretched smell. Not that she expected much in their getaway, but God, she’d need a shower when they got out of this hole, and poor Olga shivered and trembled in the cold, dirty water as if it was the worst experience of her life.

Being kidnapped by the enemy of her clan and having to go through that dirty water probably was. Amanda wasn’t altogether too shocked to see the bodies on the ground when they got back to the surface, but they still chilled her insides.

Hargreave grabbed her by the wrist. “Don’t think about it,” he said, yanking her along.

Dazed and feeling like she was experiencing everything outside of her own body, Amanda followed after him. Hargreave held Amanda’s hand, and Amanda held Olga’s.

Again, Olga proved how much this was affecting her with her tight grip. Amanda wasn’t holding on too tight. She hoped Olga would let go and make a run for it, that she’d be able to go back home without getting dragged into this, but the dragon girl held onto Amanda’s hand as though she thought she would die if she let go. It was painful.

The closer they got to the trees, the more Amanda felt Hargreave change. The air around him became more excited, more eager, and when they were beneath the shade of the canopy, he laughed out loud before whistling even louder.

No less than five men in chainmail and dragon scales dropped from the trees. Despite the armor, their wings, and weapons, Amanda hadn’t seen them. They’d painted themselves in mud and stuck leaves to their bodies. They’d actually blended in well in the shade and branches of the twigs.

“We have what we came for,” Hargreave said. “Fall back.”

His men looked to Amanda, then to Olga. “And her?”

Amanda instinctively tried to pull Olga behind her.

Hargreave smiled. “She is our guest. No harm will come to her, is that understood?”

Amanda half expected some disgruntled muttering, or even glares, but with every ounce of respect she’d seen shown to Eldric from his own men, Hargreave’s showed him the same when they bowed their heads.

“Yes, my lord.”

One of the men, a blond with a handsome young face behind a scruffy beard, stepped towards Amanda and Olga, holding out his hand. “My lady?”

It took Amanda a half second to realize he was talking to her. He wanted her to hand over Olga.

She didn’t let go of the girl’s hand. Instead, Amanda looked to Hargreave again. “Th-they won’t hurt her, will they?”

This time, she did hear the disgruntled muttering.

Hargreave nodded. “She is perfectly safe with my men.”

It was the calm expression in his eyes, despite the sounds of fighting that were still so far away and yet so close, that made Amanda swallow hard and release Olga’s hand.

Olga squeaked, and Amanda felt the need to reassure her. “I won’t let them hurt you. You’ll be safe.”

She couldn’t guarantee that, but that same trust for Hargreave and his word returned to her. If Hargreave said Olga was a guest and not to be harmed, then Amanda believed him.

She probably shouldn’t, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

The blond-haired man really did treat Olga gently, and there was nothing sinister in his gaze as he stared down at the smaller woman. Olga squeaked again when the man pulled Olga up into his arms, clearly ignoring the mud and leaves on himself as well as the smell on her.

Olga even blushed when she, reluctantly, put her arms around the man’s neck and shoulders.

So caught up in the sight of them, Amanda released an embarrassing squawk of her own when Hargreave pulled her up into his arms. Heat rushed up her neck and into her face, too. Her hands needed somewhere to be, so it only made sense for her to wrap them around Hargreave’s neck and shoulders.

And despite how dirty they were, despite how much they smelled, she couldn’t help but notice the strength and warmth of him. It was all around her, comforting her like a warm blanket.

Amanda could hardly look at him, but when she did, the way his eyes danced as he looked at her, the pleased smile that pulled at his lips, it made the heat in her face so much more intense.

His next words were softly spoken, as though anything harsher would frighten her. “I would never have left you with them.”

Without any effort at all, and before Amanda could open her mouth to reply, Hargreave’s wings made their appearance, spreading out behind him, strong and vast, before flapping down hard, yanking them into the air.

Amanda screamed. She couldn’t help herself.

Hargreave’s men shouted around her, but she could barely make out a word of what they were saying.

Didn’t matter anyway because when she opened her eyes and looked down, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of feet between her and the ground. She would have screamed again if there had been any breath in her.

Oh, right, she was breathing. She was hyperventilating. This wasn’t something she was ever going to get used to, and she remembered falling from the sky when she’d opened her closet door with that skeleton key. Not something she wanted to experience again.

Hargreave shushed her. He did it gently. There was no hint of annoyance or anger in it. “Sweet, be calm. You’ll draw attention to us. Eldric’s men will shoot us out of the sky.”

Amanda bit down on her lips. She nodded, focusing on breathing deeply through her nose.

As much as she didn’t like the way the butterflies twisted and slammed around in her stomach with every flap of Hargreave’s wings, getting shot down would mean falling again. Not something she wanted to deal with.

“That’s it, good. You’re doing so well.”

Hargreave’s voice sounded genuinely proud. Amanda wasn’t looking at him. She was too busy burying her face in his chest, but she could almost hear the smile on his mouth. It felt good. It really did.

“Don’t…don’t drop me.”

Even her words sounded like they wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.

Hargreave chuckled at her. “I would sooner spear myself.”

She believed him. That feeling inside her, the good one, stirred up again. For better or for worse, Amanda felt a pull towards this man, that she could trust him to hold her this high off the ground and keep her safe.

She relaxed, her muscles melting out of that tense, high-strung sensation that had been making her entire body cramp up without realizing it. She immediately felt better, and decided to take the risk and pull her face away from Hargreave’s chest.

The wind on her face was cool, almost cold with the height they were at and the speed they soared. Amanda looked back at Hargreave’s wings, noting the spines and spikes in some places, the red scales, and the black leathery look of them. They were beautiful.

It was also when she realized he wasn’t flapping them like a bird anymore. It seemed he’d only needed to do that to get high up into the sky. They were locked tight, allowing Hargreave to glide. Amanda still felt that up and down motion that turned her stomach as they hit currents of wind, and she had to close her eyes again, get her bearings, and then open them up one more time.

She could see Eldric’s castle fading away in the distance behind them, and in front of them, the horizon, the green fields, and even a flock of some kind of bird.

It was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen in her life. If Amanda had a camera, she would have taken a photo and made it her desktop background image. She really would have.

Amanda searched out for the blond dragon and spotted him. He was somewhat behind Hargreave to the right of them. Olga still looked frightened, but the red flush on her face looked anything but angry. Maybe Amanda had humiliated her with the screaming fit.

Now she was embarrassed.

“Where are we going?”

She almost had to yell her words. The wind was louder than she would have thought up here.

Hargreave smiled that mischievous smile that made his eyes sparkle and dance. It made him look young and handsome and almost carefree. “Home.”

Amanda didn’t ask anything after that. It didn’t seem like a good time to have a proper conversation about anything, and she figured, with the way Hargreave continued to signal to his men, that they still had to watch out for Eldric’s men to make sure they didn’t get attacked.

Amanda had written about the distance between Hargreave’s and Eldric’s castles. It was supposed to take at least an hour to fly between each one, but since she couldn’t transition between scenes, it felt longer to experience the flight for herself, and in that time, Amanda discovered she could get a little nauseous in the air like this.

She couldn’t even spend the hour thinking up questions she wanted to ask Hargreave when they landed. She was too busy focusing with all her mind and body on the power of not vomiting.

Please don’t get sick. Don’t let me get sick. I don’t want to puke.

Amanda could just picture some poor squirrel or deer down below, minding its own business, and then getting hit with a wet load of her vomit.

She wasn’t a comedy writer, so that didn’t sound the least bit pleasing to her.

Amanda squeaked when she felt another change in the wind, and when Hargreave started to come down for a landing. She hung on tighter, letting the killer butterflies in her gut get used to the feeling of descent.

“Hold on, sweet.” Hargreave laughed almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “Not too tight. You choke me.”

She
was
holding on a little too tight, but Amanda couldn’t for the life of her force herself to give Hargreave any slack. No matter how tightly and securely his arms were under her legs and around her waist, if she let him go, she somehow just knew that death would be waiting at the end of a long fall.

Hargreave went down incredibly fast and Amanda really did think they were going to hit the ground hard before he pulled up at the last second, his feet touching the ground as he landed almost at a run. The rest of his men did the same. Amanda was sure that if she had been watching the landing from somewhere else, she might have thought it was graceful, but all she wanted in that moment was to get down.

She pushed against Hargreave’s chest. “Let me go.”

His expression changed, concern in his eyes as he did as she asked, but Amanda didn’t have time to tell him he hadn’t hurt her or whatever he was worried about. The ground tilted a little too sharply beneath her feet, and she fell to her knees. Amanda sucked back several deep breaths, putting her head down and hands on the grass.

Hargreave was down with her in an instant, hands comfortingly on her shoulders. “You are not accustomed to flight.”

He said it not as a question, but a revelation.

She didn’t know how to tell him that she
was
used to flying, but only inside a plane that was big enough to have a couple hundred people in it, and strong enough for her to not feel any of that turbulence that was making her shake and tremble right now.

The men behind Hargreave chuckled at her. “Delicate little thing, is she not?”

No one had ever called Amanda delicate before, and try as she might, she really wasn’t feeling good enough to glare at…whoever it was that said that.

Hargreave took her by her arm, gently pulling her to her feet. “Come. You can rest and have water. Go tell the cooks to bring bread.”

Amanda didn’t know who he said that to, and she didn’t care, either. Crackers and soft sips of water were usually the thing she needed to make her stomach stop acting up. She leaned against Hargreave like he was her lifeline, and as queasy as she felt, she could totally tell how much he liked that.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, holding a hand to her stomach. “I’m just…not used to flying like that.”

He didn’t seem to pick up the
like that
part she added to the end of that sentence. His expression remained concerned as he helped her to walk over the grass and gravel.

Amanda had to admit, even though she thought of herself as a strong, independent woman, for the most part, it was nice having a guy holding her hand like this, as though he was waiting to spring into action to catch her if she happened to faint from the shock of the trip.

He didn’t need to go that far. Amanda was already recovering. With every step, her body felt more and more grounded. The world stopped tilting in a lousy attempt to throw her off her feet, and she was able to walk with a straight back instead of bent over because her stomach was still acting up.

She didn’t pull her hand away from his, however. His grip was warm, and his red eyes soft with compassion.

She’d written him to have red eyes because she’d thought it would make him more villainous. Not that it mattered because she clearly hadn’t written this world, and now, as she got lost in his stare, she also knew that red wasn’t a villain’s color. It actually managed to look both pretty and handsome on him at the same time. They looked like a hero’s eyes.

Amanda had to look away. It was one thing for her to be feeling these things for him, to be looking at him like he might be heroic, but she wasn’t going to be sticking around for long.

The second she found that skeleton key, she was out of here.

The thought made her chest ache. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

“Are you well? Did I…frighten you? When I took you from the castle?”

Why did he have to be such a bad boy who was so…right? That was like her kryptonite whenever she was writing her fictional heroes. Strong, risk taking men who lived on the wild side, but knew how to read the emotions of the women in their lives.

“I was just…thinking. You didn’t scare me. Not really. This is all just so new.”

Hargreave nodded. “I do not know where you came from, but I will promise you this, you will feel more than at home in my castle. It does not have the same…comforts as Eldric’s castle.” He said that with a certain bite to his tone. “But it’s still home.”