Page 12 of Nine-Tenths

Right.

Smoke inhalationandpuncture wounds.

Everything between the bottom of my right ear and my right elbow fuckingburns.

"I'll call when I'm done with that idiot," Hadi says, jabbing a finger at me. "Right now I have to go with him to the hospital."

"I can go by myself," I crackle, distorted by the tight dryness of my throat.

"I'll go," the dragon says, and everybody ignores me when I protest a second time. "Please, it's the least I can do. This way you can stay with the shop."

I pull off the oxygen mask long enough to shout "I said I can go by myself!", and then start heaving another round of hacking coughs.

The paramedic, now packing wads of sterile gauze into the five neat dime-sized wounds,tsksagain. She pushes the mask back over my face, and says, "Actually,I'mtaking you." She points at the dragon. "Loverboy. Get in if you're getting in."

"He's isn’t—"

"I'm not—"

"Don't care," the paramedic interrupts. She removes my mask briskly, and steps up into the box to stow her gear.

I don’t need babysitting, so I stand and try to clamber one-handed up the fender. Okay, I haven't had breakfast, I'm dehydrated, I've lost blood, and I'm having trouble breathing, so it's a dumb move, right? I'll cop to that. My foot doesn't land on the fender, and I scrape my shin as I slide down, scrabbling for the rails.

I'm gonna add a broken jaw to my list of injuries and it'll bemortifying—

The dragon’s arm is around my waist before I hit the pavement.

"Whoop!" I shout as my feet come off the ground. "I'm sorry, are you… actually holding me up like a sack of potatoes?" I twist my neck to stare up at the guy. He’s not even straining. "Uh, as fun as this is, can you put me—"

"Of course," he blurts, and carefully sets me back on my feet. "Oh, your shirt."

His attention isn't on the new black streaks decorating the waist. He's looking at where the paramedic cut off the sleeve, the tape on my skin, the spots of blood blooming against the gauze.

It’s really not this guy's day.Really not mine either, I decide, and flap my good hand at him when he tries to hand me up into the ambulance like some Jane Austen heroine. Yes, I've read Jane Austen. One, the books are good, and two, I appreciate a well-crafted narrative. Also, it has nothing to do with being a pining hopeless romantic, no matter what Gemma tells you, so there.

"Sit," the paramedic barks. She points at the bench along the side of the box.

Like two naughty school children, we obey in unison.

The paramedic closes the doors, glares once to make sure we stay put, then turns her attention to paperwork. The driver pulls away slowly, gently easing around the firetruck.

The dragon's a soothing warmth beside me in a way ahomo sapienscan never be, and the adrenaline spike from the near-disaster has me woozy enough to want to lay my head on his shoulder. I don’t though, obviously.

"Awww," I say after a moment. "No sirens."

The dragon stifles a laugh.

"What?"

"I was hoping for the sirens, too," he admits in a whisper.

And then he smiles at me.

It punches all the air right out of my lungs.

The skin beside his eyes crinkle up into shallow crow’s feet. It hits me for the first time that he's more than just objectively handsome. I'd noticed, in a distantly-aesthetic way, before now.But shit, he really isattractivein a way only someone whose face you've seen transform with honest, intimate emotion can be. With the color still high on his face from the fire, it makes him all English-rosy and glowy and, yeah,no, let's back this train up.

Now is a bad time for this kind of thing.

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