Page 11 of Marked By His Alpha Dragon's Desire

“Try not to use your arms too much. They’ll need to stay bandaged for the next twenty-four hours, then they get changed as needed after that. Okay?”

“Sure thing.” Raphael smiled.

My face heated. “You’ve probably had burns you’ve had to treat before, so this is nothing new.”

“Nope, but I like hearing it from you. Are you going to keep an eye on me the rest of the day?”

I nodded. “I guess I am.”

The fire had dulled considerably now, and the second ambulance had already left with Doug to go to the hospital. I caught Tyler’s eye, and he gave us the go-ahead to return to the station.

My partner, Charlie, and I put the gurney back into the ambulance.

“Ready?” I asked Raphael.

He nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

Chapter 7

Raphael

I didn’t know whether to kick my new boss or kiss him. Sure, he had all but guaranteed that I would get more time with Luca—time to explore this explosive connection between us. But now I had to be around a human while my body rapidly healed all the burns that he had so intimately cared for.

Luca was going to get suspicious.

Thankfully, he was quick in his work to get them cleaned up and covered, because otherwise, he would notice that they were already starting to change. I willed my dragon back, forcing him not to speed up the healing process like I normally would. Already, the burn that had scorched our lungs and caused my voice to disappear had fixed itself. I knew it was a red flag for Luca that I somehow managed to escape the fire without any smoke inhalation issues, but he didn’t seem to question it.

“I’m surprised you’re not fussing about riding in the ambulance,” Luca said.

I cleared my throat. “My desire to spend time with you outweighs my concern about how my new co-workers view me.”

Luca chuckled. “I knew it was a macho thing. You firefighters are all the same. Once we get back to the station, I have some paperwork to do before I finish my shift, but you can rest if you’d like.”

“I’d like that.” I’d like any scenario where Luca was there with me. Sure, this wasn’t the first date I had in mind, but I could work with it.

Luca sat with me the entire ride back to the station. Then he got me settled into one of their dorm rooms. They were slightly smaller than the dorms we had at the fire station, probably because they didn’t do multi-day shifts like we did.

“I’ll be back shortly,” he said.

The building was quiet since everyone was still out fighting the fire. It would be hours before they all returned. If I slept, it was very likely that my dragon would heal all my burns, but it wasn’t as if I could run around acting like everything was normal. Luca had lived in this town for months, and it had only taken a short amount of time with me here for us to risk exposing all of us.

I could at least hide them from him while they were bandaged. And he wasn’t likely to want to unbandage for twenty-four hours so we didn’t expose the open wounds to any germs. Only there weren’t any open wounds anymore. My dragon had almost completely healed me. If we looked at the burns now, we’d see new pink skin.

After a while, Luca returned. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder.

“Did you get some rest?”

“Yes, I did.” Sort of. I mostly spent the time worrying about how to explain to him what I was.

“Great.” He handed me a bottle of water. “Make sure you’re staying hydrated. I brought more bandages in case we need to change them. Maybe I should take a look, I feel like I rushed the cleaning while we were on site.”

“They’re fine,” I said too quickly.

“I know. I know. We don’t want to expose any germs unnecessarily. I’ll leave them alone. Are you in any pain? I can’tbelieve I didn’t offer you any pain relief earlier. You just act so normal. I forget that you were injured.”

I put my hand over Luca’s. An electric jolt went through us at our touch, but I didn’t pull away. “I promise I will let you know if I need anything. I realize I got thrust upon you by Tyler. Would you rather I not be here?” I asked.

He bit his lip, and I wanted to tug it free from his mouth.

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